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Big bang is BS. What went bang? Where did the matter come from to begin with? Atheists have faith that there is no God. I have faith there is a God. If they are right, I guess I missed out on some things. If I’m right, they spend eternity in hell. How much of a gambler are you? Evidence and not making assumptions is the key. There is evidence of an expanding universe. If we don't know something, why assume God did it? What would you call the Uncaused Cause? Has someone besides theists made a claim for uncaused cause? Theists assume God - whatever that is supposed to be - to be the uncaused cause. When God is shown to be the ultimate explanation of the universe and a person asks, “What caused God?”, that is on par with showing that a locomotive is the explanation for the motion of boxcars and someone asking, “Yes, but what’s pulling the locomotive?” Just as a boxcar’s motion can be explained only by something that is not itself a boxcar, the universe’s existence (including its beginning and motion within it) can be explained only by something that it not itself the universe. If an atheist sees that infinite regression is a bad explanation, then he needs a final cause to make the causal chain finite in length, a cause that by its very nature makes no sense to ask what caused it. The question now isn’t, “What caused God?” but “What is this cause?” and “Is it God?” It hasn't been shown that a God exists. It is being assumed that a God - whatever that is - exists and that God, as it is assumed to be, is eternal. The whole religious thing is base not on observation of how the universe works, evidence for the existence of a God, but assumption and faith. Nor should it be assumed that the universe requires the proposition of a God - whatever that is - to explain its existence. The simple truth is; we don't know enough to form a conclusion. A belief in God - whatever that is - is a faith based conclusion.
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2 Peter 2:6 NKJV
- and turning the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah into ashes, condemned them to destruction, making them an example to those who afterward would live ungodly;
Psalm 14:1
- The fool says in his heart, “There is no God.” They are corrupt, they do abominable deeds; there is none who does good.
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Big bang is BS. What went bang? Where did the matter come from to begin with? Atheists have faith that there is no God. I have faith there is a God. If they are right, I guess I missed out on some things. If I’m right, they spend eternity in hell. How much of a gambler are you? Evidence and not making assumptions is the key. There is evidence of an expanding universe. If we don't know something, why assume God did it? What would you call the Uncaused Cause? Has someone besides theists made a claim for uncaused cause? Theists assume God - whatever that is supposed to be - to be the uncaused cause. When God is shown to be the ultimate explanation of the universe and a person asks, “What caused God?”, that is on par with showing that a locomotive is the explanation for the motion of boxcars and someone asking, “Yes, but what’s pulling the locomotive?” Just as a boxcar’s motion can be explained only by something that is not itself a boxcar, the universe’s existence (including its beginning and motion within it) can be explained only by something that it not itself the universe. If an atheist sees that infinite regression is a bad explanation, then he needs a final cause to make the causal chain finite in length, a cause that by its very nature makes no sense to ask what caused it. The question now isn’t, “What caused God?” but “What is this cause?” and “Is it God?” A god being the cause is an unsubstantiated assertion. You kinda wasted your time on your explanation. You don’t believe in God. How’s that working out for your country? Do you have a Constitutionally enshrined God given right to guns, freedom of speech or liberty without a mask? Unfortunately the US is probably eventually headed down the same road but our faith in God and freedoms are still several decades ahead of yours. IMO. Without God might is right and nobody has a birthright to freedom of speech or weapons. Look no further than Australia. Which is exactly the reason every communist country throughout history has looked to push atheism and ban Christianity. You unnecessarily convolute religion with politics, irrespective, compared with your country, we are doing great. I wouldn't want to live anywhere else. Getting more secular by the minute.
Whatever you said...everyone knows you are a lying jerk. That's a bold assertion. Point out where you think I lied. Well?
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The New World Order doesn't like competition.
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In general I agree with the sentiment of your stance. I think that we vary on the importance and place of scripture a bit and the church but definitely find unity at the centrality of the resurrection. Our differences of opinion are OK. And I appreciated your last post. Most people who walked away from Christianity did so for reasons that had absolutely nothing to do with Jesus. They walked away from a version of Christianity that could be compared to a house of cards…if someone convinced them (for example) that if the earth wasn’t really created in 6 literal days, then why should they believe anything else in the Bible…that if any part of any of the 66 books of the Bible is proven to be untrue, then the Bible isn’t true, and if the Bible isn’t true, then their version of Christianity comes crashin’ down (like a house of cards). Who taught them that believing non-essential things, like the literal 6 day creation account in Genesis (for example) was essential to following Jesus…? A person can certainly follow Jesus without believing whatever it is that they’ve decided they no longer believe (non-essential beliefs). And what these folks disbelieve usually intersects with something in the Old Testament. These people need to know that Christianity can stand on its own two New Covenant, nail-scarred, resurrection, first-century feet. Christianity does not need to be propped up by the Hebrew Scriptures. When Peter saw Jesus crucified, and he knew He died, and he knew where He was entombed…and then a few days later he shared a meal with Jesus on the beach…Peter’s faith didn’t need any ancient props. Current events sufficed. Most non-Christians and post-Christians nowadays have a favorable view of Jesus, and while many may not see Him as divine, they still see Him as someone whose life is worth striving to imitate. The point is ~ people don’t leave the church or the faith because of Jesus. He’s not the stumbling block. Other things have been put in their way, things that have made the church and the faith unnecessarily unattractive and resistible to people who left because of it. Jesus’ Apostle’s appropriately leveraged the Old Testament to make their case to their fellow Jews in the first-century. But when preaching to Gentiles, even in the first-century, they leveraged a more recent development ~ the resurrection. Peter, Andrew, James, John, and Jesus’ other earliest followers didn’t choose to follow Him because of something they read; they chose to follow Him because of something they saw The Bible, especially the New Testament, plays an important role in helping us understand what it means to follow Jesus, but it is not ‘the’ reason I follow Him. I don’t believe because of a book, I believe because of an event that inspired the book. The Bible didn’t create Christianity; Christianity created the Bible. Christianity existed for well over 200 years before there ever was ‘the Bible’. But Christianity did not exist before there was the resurrection. Again, I think these truths are important in reaching the next generation, and in re-reaching the current generation as well. In what you are saying do you see Christ and Christ crucified as an experience or a reality?
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It hasn't been shown that a God exists. Likewise, it has not been proven that God does not exist. To consider the wonders of this world and night sky and think it was all made by accident would be a huge leap of misplaced faith, far more than that of a Christian who places his faith in God. The godless will do, say and believe anything to deny God. It is in our human nature to hate and deny God. We humans cannot change our nature. If God does not change that within us, we have no hope.
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The Mexican that has the landscape supply next to me asked if I thought we would be with our dead parents.
Hell. I though he would know.
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In general I agree with the sentiment of your stance. I think that we vary on the importance and place of scripture a bit and the church but definitely find unity at the centrality of the resurrection. Our differences of opinion are OK. And I appreciated your last post. Most people who walked away from Christianity did so for reasons that had absolutely nothing to do with Jesus. They walked away from a version of Christianity that could be compared to a house of cards…if someone convinced them (for example) that if the earth wasn’t really created in 6 literal days, then why should they believe anything else in the Bible…that if any part of any of the 66 books of the Bible is proven to be untrue, then the Bible isn’t true, and if the Bible isn’t true, then their version of Christianity comes crashin’ down (like a house of cards). Who taught them that believing non-essential things, like the literal 6 day creation account in Genesis (for example) was essential to following Jesus…? A person can certainly follow Jesus without believing whatever it is that they’ve decided they no longer believe (non-essential beliefs). And what these folks disbelieve usually intersects with something in the Old Testament. I will say this... man is corrupted, from Adam and Eve, to Moses and David. The bible is written by men, it is corrupted. It's the account of man reaching to God with all the good and bad. God reached back to man with Christ, who didn't leave one personal written word. Then written words are continued again after the resurrection, man was reaching back to God. No matter how well meaning and sincere any man is in his attempt to 'speak' for God, they will always be interpreting it through the human deficiency. Man's words are rooted in time, place and space. They are insufficient to describe, define or contain God. True communication with God does not use man words, it's through spirit, emotion. Man's closest word to describe God is not eternal, it's infinity. He exists forward and backward, outward and inward, from infinite points in infinite directions. The mind can't comprehend that, words can't explain it. Nothing wrong with the bible used as a self search into your relationship with God, you are just another human in the list of humans in the bible doing the same. If someone uses those human words to ostracize or judge another man's relationship with God... well that's corrupted human nature at it's core... for good or bad that's just how it is. Kent
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Big bang is BS. What went bang? Where did the matter come from to begin with? Atheists have faith that there is no God. I have faith there is a God. If they are right, I guess I missed out on some things. If I’m right, they spend eternity in hell. How much of a gambler are you? Evidence and not making assumptions is the key. There is evidence of an expanding universe. If we don't know something, why assume God did it? What would you call the Uncaused Cause? Has someone besides theists made a claim for uncaused cause? Theists assume God - whatever that is supposed to be - to be the uncaused cause. When God is shown to be the ultimate explanation of the universe and a person asks, “What caused God?”, that is on par with showing that a locomotive is the explanation for the motion of boxcars and someone asking, “Yes, but what’s pulling the locomotive?” Just as a boxcar’s motion can be explained only by something that is not itself a boxcar, the universe’s existence (including its beginning and motion within it) can be explained only by something that it not itself the universe. If an atheist sees that infinite regression is a bad explanation, then he needs a final cause to make the causal chain finite in length, a cause that by its very nature makes no sense to ask what caused it. The question now isn’t, “What caused God?” but “What is this cause?” and “Is it God?” It hasn't been shown that a God exists. It is being assumed that a God - whatever that is - exists and that God, as it is assumed to be, is eternal. The whole religious thing is base not on observation of how the universe works, evidence for the existence of a God, but assumption and faith. Nor should it be assumed that the universe requires the proposition of a God - whatever that is - to explain its existence. The simple truth is; we don't know enough to form a conclusion. A belief in God - whatever that is - is a faith based conclusion. Again, The question now isn’t, “What caused God?” but “What is this cause?” and “Is it God?” For me , I sort of agree with your last sentence, with a little rearranging...."A belief in God-My faith knows what it is-For me is a faith based conclusion" That is my conclusion...
Illegitimi non carborundum
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I will say this... man is corrupted, from Adam and Eve, to Moses and David. The bible is written by men, it is corrupted. It's the account of man reaching to God with all the good and bad. God reached back to man with Christ, who didn't leave one personal written word. Then written words are continued again after the resurrection, man was reaching back to God. No matter how well meaning and sincere any man is in his attempt to 'speak' for God, they will always be interpreting it through the human deficiency. To say such a thing is a slap in that face of a sovereign God who is in fact very much control of all things, most of all His word in the form of the Bible. This book is the direct & true word of God for our direction and instruction. If this is not true, then that would put every word into question and would be in it's whole, a lie. God caused man to write it and He has more than enough power to preserve His word in truth for all time. The Bible as a living Word of God, came by divine inspiration, as attested to by Apostle Peter as he writes, “Knowing this first, that no prophecy of Scripture is of any private interpretation, for prophecy never came by the will of man, but holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit” (2 Peter 1:20-12).
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Big bang is BS. What went bang? Where did the matter come from to begin with? Atheists have faith that there is no God. I have faith there is a God. If they are right, I guess I missed out on some things. If I’m right, they spend eternity in hell. How much of a gambler are you? Evidence and not making assumptions is the key. There is evidence of an expanding universe. If we don't know something, why assume God did it? What would you call the Uncaused Cause? Has someone besides theists made a claim for uncaused cause? Physicists who subscribe to the Big Bang theory. Theists assume God - whatever that is supposed to be - to be the uncaused cause. I'm asking you what you call it.
Last edited by Tyrone; 09/19/22.
Politics is War by Other Means
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There's a reason Jesus didn't write anything and he made man aware of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is our true minister, our communication with God. We can not move forward spiritually without severing the physical, there is no physical path to God, that's man's mistake thinking there is. It doesn't affect God he's patient and understanding, it affects our relationships with each other while here.
Kent
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The Bible as a living Word of God, came by divine inspiration, as attested to by Apostle Peter as he writes, “Knowing this first, that no prophecy of Scripture is of any private interpretation, for prophecy never came by the will of man, but holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit” (2 Peter 1:20-12). But there are works of fiction in the Bible, meant to illustrate lessons. The parables are small examples and it is commonly thought that the Book of Judith is another example. Whether Judith existed or not is irrelevant. This doesn't make the Bible any less true. Indeed, the Bible is 100% the inspired word of God. If anyone thinks something is wrong with it, they are misunderstanding what they are reading.
Politics is War by Other Means
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In what you are saying do you see Christ and Christ crucified as an experience or a reality? As you mentioned earlier, Apostle Paul declared that Christianity is false unless the resurrection of Jesus is a historical fact. He even names the still living eyewitnesses of the Resurrection at the time, pretty much challenging his readers to fact-check him by asking those still living eyewitnesses of the Resurrection themselves about it. But he didn’t say, “Believe that Jesus rose from the dead because I’m writing the Bible and the Bible is the authority.” Truths and realities outside of the Bible are what got Christianity started. Before the New Testament was ever even written, many thousands of Jews and Gentiles understood the reality and the truth of the Resurrection, and the reality and the truth of the Christianity that it launched. Unbelievers in the mid-first century were never asked to become followers of Jesus through blind faith in an authoritative New Testament that didn’t even exist yet, but on the reality and the truth of God and the historical fact of the Resurrection. Contrary to what some skeptics assert, the New Testament writers did not create the Resurrection; the Resurrection created the New Testament writers. So the Resurrection…and the Christianity that it launched…would still be real and true even if every Bible and manuscript in the world were non-existent.
Every day on this side of the ground is a win.
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There's a reason Jesus didn't write anything and he made man aware of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is our true minister, our communication with God. We can not move forward spiritually without severing the physical, there is no physical path to God, that's man's mistake thinking there is. It doesn't affect God he's patient and understanding, it affects our relationships with each other while here.
Kent I’m aware of this view and would say that I travelled a good way down that path. The problem that I found was no matter how hard I tried to transcend or ascend I couldn’t. I could find no objective measure to indicate that my efforts were successful. I’m curious to know what you have seen or experienced in your life that gives you objectivity regarding spiritual progress (growth?) through severing the physical.
Last edited by IZH27; 09/19/22.
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Thanks Antlers.
We certainly agree on the centrality of Christ as the thing that holds it all together and gives it meaning.
How do you view that as playing out in a life, the tip of the spear so to speak? I wasn’t very clear but that was the thought behind my question. When a person sees that truth is it an experience based or just the reality alone that makes it work?
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The Holy Spirit is our true minister, our communication with God. The commonly accepted doctrine of sola scriptura teaches that the Bible is the the sole infallible source of authority for Christian faith and practice. While the HS does help us with understanding the Word of God, He cannot teach anything that contradicts the Word of God. There are some groups out there that claim to hear directly from God on a regular basis, but some of this does not line up with the Bible and thus heretical. The Bible is the last word for us from God. It cannot be added to or diminished as per Deut. 4:2
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With regards to the OP/article, I see this as great news. I would hate to think that our country/culture/society was going down the crapper like it is with Christianity on the rise. There is no doubt in my mind that the deterioration we see in American life is directly correlated to our diminishing faith in God; in addition, many who profess to be Christian have become useful idiots to the Left. All we need is a spiritual revival to get back on the right path. Alas, I fear that the critical mass needed for this may no longer exist, although it is heartening to see so much faith and biblical knowledge here on the Campfire.
I've not read all of the rest of the thread, so I'll just say that it all boils down to what you are going to do with the resurrection. Are you going to write off the eyewitnesses of that event as liars or lunatics and dismiss it? Or are you going to accept their accounts as the truth, and therefore see that God exists? It has to be one or the other, doesn't it? After that, you can quibble over details of theology all you want, or quibble over Big Bangs, geologic time, evolution and so on. But the the resurrection has to be dealt with, one way or the other, some time or another. It was, I believe, the key event in all of history.
The biggest problem our country has is not systemic racism, it's systemic stupidity.
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We certainly agree on the centrality of Christ as the thing that holds it all together and gives it meaning. How do you view that as playing out in a life, the tip of the spear so to speak? I wasn’t very clear but that was the thought behind my question. When a person sees that truth is it an experience based or just the reality alone that makes it work? To me, I think once one assuredly realizes the truth and the reality of it, it’s like a breath of fresh air. It’s so compelling, and it’s so defensible. And it changes one’s perspective. One truly realizes that happiness isn’t just dependent on whatever life throws our way; we do have a say in the matter. We can find peace amongst the chaos, and contentment despite limitations, and joy even in our lowest moments. My hope is anchored to an event ~ the very same event that kindled the dwindling hope of Peter and John and James (the brother of Jesus) and the rest of the first followers of Jesus. Peter says that his hope, and our hope, is anchored to the resurrection of Jesus. “In His great ‘mercy’ He has given us ‘new birth’ into a ‘living hope’ through the ‘resurrection’ of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil, or fade.” To me, assuredly knowing the truth and the reality of the original version of Christianity…fully embracing it…changes the way one sees life, lives life, and basically fully experiences life. It makes one’s life better, and it makes one better at life.
Every day on this side of the ground is a win.
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