Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Sunday's religious debate....death....

Not a good proof of God designing each species as they presently are, though, as that digestive pattern doesn't exactly scream intelligent design. It works, and that's about all you can say about it.

Even with the airplane example - ever notice how God never gets involved in saving people in airplanes - when the wings come off at high-altitude?


Just goes to show you can't operate on a wing and a prayer........................ you need two wings!

Hi Derby; you're right and I think you used a good choice of words. I do follow a "revealed religion."

gdv

Where's the science in that?

So can you make a rabbit from scratch?

........yeah, you have to bring your own scratch.

We know that herbivores can be so designed as not to require the consumption of their feces. This seems to imply that rabbits were not designed by the same designer who made other such herbivores. To get more technical, most herbivores with high fiber diets have structures for digesting grasses at the beginning of the digestive tract, requiring only one pass. Rabbits only have those structures near the end, which is why they need to redigest their feces. This strongly suggests that a diet high in fiber was a late adaptation, and not designed from the beginning, or even early on, for it. I merely point this out because it is not always the case that a complexity is prima facie evidence for a designer, and can in fact be just the opposite.

So........you can't make one.......can ya?

Forgive my ignorance but I have to agree with that statement if in fact there is an eternity, which leads me to the question, Why did he even bother creating it in the first place if it is only a stepping stone on the way to eternal life. Why didn't he just make us the way he wanted in the first place? It seems silly that he would create humanity only to pick and choose those that he approves of and cast aside others . To my mind it seems somewhat perverse to create the masses of which he claims love for each and every individual person equally, yet gives them minds that respond to him in different ways, some accepting of him, others rejecting of him, some that never hear of him, meanwhile he's only tolerant to allow passage of those who adopt his vision.

I don't reject that there is a higher being, nor do I accept it as gospel either. So many religions, so many theories, how do you choose? I grew up with a grandfather as a preacher, fire and brimstone Sunday school teaching grandmother on the otherside, and did much time in church, knocked on Gods door many times and found no answers and no comfort, not that I'm uncomfortable, just don't know if I'll ever see the 'light' Even today I pray for others, really don't know who I'm praying to but hope someones listening. Kinda looking foreward to the day I die just to find out the answer. In the meantime I'm gonna enjoy what life offers within the means of my conscience,(it's a strict one) be good to my dogs, maybe even to people, but prefer dogs! If there are pearly gates, I'll be expecting a good conversation, even if I get turfed. I guess I have faith in something, just not sure what.

Not yet.

Of curse this whole argument is a good illustration of why there is no longer 'Christ at the campfire'. Is anyone's mind every changed? You certainly cannot use reason to convince someone of something that is taken on faith.

The arguments are interesting, but become less so when resorting to proofs like scripture which is itself not verifiable by external means.

My biggest worry is the sort of thinking that rejects logic, reason and science in favor of dogmatic belief. That way leads to book burning, luddism, inquisition and worse.

We laugh at the primitiveness of the middle easter societies, but that is exactly what you get under a society where religion holds sway over a secular form of government.

For me - I'd need to see something "Godly", you know, things like he was supposedly showing people 2000 years ago.

A bush popping into fire, rotting dead men coming back to life, a man turning to salt, a world where nothing died, a sea parting, an angel - that kind of thing.

Something "impossible".

Like an amputee growing new legs after being prayed on or after having hands layed on.

Or an airplane set gently down on a runway after it's wings fell off.

Or a world with no war, death and disease.

You know - something BIG.

Until then I remain a skeptic's skeptic - on all manner of things. I'm a "show me the money" kind of guy. A "prove it" person.

Like I said before, so far, there is as much proof there is a tooth fairy as there is proof there is a God.

One man's religion - is another man's myth.

Different people have different ways of looking at and understanding such things.

My own way is like this. I don't believe that eternity is an infinite amount of time. That simply doesn't make any sense to me. I'm reminded of Rita Rudner's amazement at a friend of hers who was in labor for 36 hours. "I can't imagine that," she said. "I don't even want to do something that feels good for 36 hours!"

Based on my experience here on Earth so far, I'm glad I'll probably die around age 70 or 80, if I manage to avoid those fast-moving semi trucks until then. I can easily imagine being thoroughly bored with life if I lived to 120 or 130, and feeling trapped.

Even if I have very little idea what I'm talking about, and it'd really take me 1000 years to get bored, how do you think I'd feel after a million years in Heaven? How about after hundreds of trillions of years? I'd be freakin' insane, and so would you.

No, I don't think eternity is an infinite amount of time. I think eternity is the opposite of time. Or, more rigorously, I think eternity is a congruential simultaneity of at least six dimensions and probably more.

Think of it this way. In each of our first three dimensions--length, width, height--you can at least theoretically move in either direction at whatever speed and to whatever distance you like, and back again. But in our fourth dimension--time--we are constrained to move in only one direction (forward) at only one rate (one second per second).

We're used to that constraint, because we've been captive to it quite literally since the beginning of time; but when you think about it it certainly seems like rather an arbitrary limitation. Why are we limited that way, and who's doing the limiting?

I think eternity amounts to the removal of that limitation: the opposite of time. It's a bit mind-bending, though, because if I'm right, and in eternity we'll have complete access to all our dimensions, then we'll end up not being able to move at all: moving implies being in one place at a certain time and then in a different place at a later time; but without any limited-access time-like dimension, the concept of time--and therefore of moving--has no meaning.

It's fun to think about when you've got nothing better to do.

Another thing that's fun is to find a Southern Baptist and holler, "God is a simultaneity!" and see what he does.

I have many pages yet to read in this thread, so probably many have already responded to this.

But, as someone who almost died a month ago, let me address the question.

I am not afraid of death. I know Whose I am and where I am going, and I know that it will be better than anything I have here.

That said, I don't want to die. Maybe I should say that I'm not ready to die. I don't want to leave my husband, my children, my grandchild and my sister on this earth without a wife, mother, grandmother or sister. I know how much they love me. I know how much it would deeply pain them to not have me in their lives anymore. (I am not boasting; I am simply being honest here.)

But I don't fear death itself. I hope it doesn't hurt when it happens, but that is my own human nature speaking. I can't think of anything more exciting than finally getting to bow down in the presence of my Savior.

Penny

Or vice versa.

Amen, brother: preach it!

bushrat,

God has no desire or reason to create robots. Man can do that with the material that God has supplied.

We are alloted some time here, no one knows for how long, and in that time we can make the choice as to whether or not we want to be accepted as Gods' children, joint heirs with Christ Jesus, or follow the devil, Satan. All that is required to become a child of God to realize the fact that we are born sinners and need a saviour. Then repent of our sins. That does not mean that we quit sinning but that we should begin sinning less and confess our sins to our Lord Jesus, not to some pope or any other man. It's between God and us. And we simply accept Jesus as our Lord and saviour. That is according to Gods' word, not mine.

Our time on earth is not when He chooses whether or not to accept us but for us to make the decision. God , I don't think, will force anyone to go to heaven as you can tell from what is said on this forum, there are many that just do not want anything to do with God. Intelligent men at that.

I pray daily for the unsaved but no man can make another accept Christ. That is his cross to bear. Heaven and hell are both real and permanent. No escape from hell and no one will want to leave heaven. Really, it's serious business. Think about your future.
Today may be the last one for many people, and then it is too late.

It's all very well to say that, but if you'll forgive me, I don't believe you.

First of all, I don't think you're as open-minded as all that. If you were to witness a burning bush, or Jesus raising the dead or parting a sea, I don't think you'd fall to your knees and gasp, "My Lord and my God!" I think you'd scratch your chin and say, "Hmm. Now how'd he do that? Obviously there's got to be a trick to it somewhere, just like there was when David Copperfield made the Statue of Liberty disappear!"

And on the other hand, I don't think you're as skeptical as all that. I'll bet you believe a lot of things that you've never seen proven. For example, you probably believe that the Apollo astronauts walked on the moon. You probably believe the Earth is round. You probably believe the Sun is a big ball of gas lit by the fusion of hydrogen into helium. You probably believe a 757 crashed into the Pentagon on 9/11/2001. But you accept all those things on faith, because none of them have been proven to you. (Probably not very many could be.)

Far be it from me to say what you must or must not believe: that's your business. But it is your business: your beliefs and lacks of belief are your own choices, not some involuntary prison you find yourself in because you're condemned to be less credulous than the common man.

Tod, it's not a hard life. It's the easiest life you could imagine. Jesus said, "...my yoke is easy and my burden is light." (Matthew 11:30) I know it seems as though it should be the opposite, but it's not.

His spirit within me makes me want to live like Him. No, not just want... I thirst for it... I hunger after it.


And what are all those things worth? Absolutely nothing. Our joy is not in possessions, but in the Lord.

Penny

He made us; we belong to Him. Doesn't He have the right to do with us as He will?


Human nature and free will (the free will to make bad choices as well as good ones) have existed since the beginning of man.


Why do you think that God has to justify His behavior to anyone? He created the universe and all that is in it. He makes the rules.

Penny

Not quite Barak.

For four decades or so - I TRIED to believe.

I mean, no man on earth could ever loved his parents more than I did. If I do anything to see them again, and never die, and live in paradise - with them - forever - I'd jump at the chance. But my mind can't suspend its disbelief and Christians, no matter how hard they try, can't answer many of the questions I've outlined.

To think that EVERY peer-reviewed paleontologist is wrong, to think animals were all created within days of man, to believe in a Noah, and a world-wide flood - when there's no evidence of such, to believe the races of man are a few thousand years old, and life on earth the same - I just can't suspend my logical mind enough to enable unquestioning faith to take it's place.

There's wishful thinking (faith) and then there is reality - and observable facts.

I need to see (or hear about) real evidence - before I'll believe in ANYTHING.

It a rare person who try to walk in those footsteps - so rare we remark on it.

"Sell your possessions and give to charity; make yourselves purses which do not wear out, an unfailing treasure in heaven, where no thief comes near, nor moth destroys." Luke 12:33