Start with the assumtion that the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob exists....and then reason from there.
Posted on 12/07/2008 8:52:29 AM PST by Soothesayer
A New York man is linking the suicide of his 22-year-old son, a military veteran who had bright prospects in college, to the anti-Christian book "The God Delusion" by Richard Dawkins after a college professor challenged the son to read it.
"Three people told us he had taken a biology class and was doing well in it, but other students and the professor were really challenging my son, his faith. They didn't like him as a Republican, as a Christian, and as a conservative who believed in intelligent design," the grief-stricken father, Keith Kilgore, told WND about his son, Jesse.
"This professor either assigned him to read or challenged him to read a book, 'The God Delusion,' by Richard Dawkins," he said.
(Excerpt) Read more at worldnetdaily.com ...
And I agree with Joe 6-pack. Atheists would construct a much more believable argument against “the non existent monster on the other side of the door” if they didn't spend so much of their time and energy pushing against the unseen force trying to open that door.
Faith in God and your relationship to God is, Personal for each individual. “There are no aethists in Foxholes”.
The majority of humans are founded in a desire for Good, some more then others.
Some see their very existance as a will of God to do good on earth i.e., clergy, others are in the middle of course some doubters exist, these doubters are the atheist’s and agnostics.
I like to define the fringe minority of the truly evil as a manifestation of physiological or Psychological unbalance so faith escapes them completely.
But the focus is on the doubters that claim aetheism and demand proof beyond a resonable doubt that God exists.
I have debated many, with the hardcore cases I usually ask them to define the universe and infinity.
Of course you get the Mathematical and Physics answers, but eventually they all come around to agree that the never ending properties make for the only truth in that anything and all things are possible.
and that my friend is the Faith in God that leads to eternal truth.
“The question then becomes one of are you more comfortable dying an atheist and finding out the theists were correct or, are you more comforable with the concept of dying a theist and having nothing after because the atheists were correct?”
I would be more comfortable just dying. If the theists are correct, I will get to know that there is justice against evil, even if I don’t get saved from hell. If the atheists are correct, I will no longer care because I will be dead. Unless, of course, part of being in hell is never knowing that God exists. That would be scary.
“Carl Sagan, an atheist, famously said, “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.””
This is such bogus science. All this does is say: “People who disagree with Carl Sagan are held to a much higher burden of proof than people who agree with Carl Sagan.”
But it’s a great debating device if you get to be the one who defines what is extraordinary.
Bayes theorem, which is the best single way to make decisions given an existing body of evidence, REQUIRES a “prior”—that is, an entirely subjective analysis by the decider about his prior beliefs on the decision to be made. The data then modifies the prior.
What Sagan is really saying is that everyone else has to accept Sagan’s extremely strongly held subjective “prior” that God does not exist. If we do, the evidence required to overcome this subjective prior would have to be very strong because everyone would have accepted Sagan’s prior belief.
Put another way, Sagan’s subjective “prior” is not (according to Sagan) extraordinary. Thus, he needs hardly any proof. OTOH, any “prior” with which Sagan disagrees is “extraordinary” and thus, extremely difficult to prove. Sweet, if you can find enough suckers to sign-on.
I’ve thought about that a bit. It keeps me going.
Start with the assumtion that the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob exists....and then reason from there.
“Medication and therapy helps but it isn’t a cure. The pain is lessened significantly but the doubt and despair remain.”
Anti-depressants and therapy work really, really well for people with mild to moderate depression; chronic, severe depression is a much tougher nut. The newer generation of anti-psychotics are amazing and can really help bipolar folks through the worst patches, if you can get your mentally ill friend/relative to actually take them. Much of mental illness is driven by brain chemistry: fix the chemistry and you can make people feel a lot better.
Ridiculous. Your faith would have be shallow as a puddle for Richard Dawson to crack a hole in it.
Perhaps God traveled back in time to create the slime he evolved from.
“Since when is morality the foundation of reason? What does morality have to do with F=MA? “
With respect, your second sentence does not really address the question you pose. I don’t believe your really mean to say that F=MA IS reason. Rather, it is part of the warp of our universe. Its DISCOVERY was the PRODUCT of reason and measurement—it is not, itself, reason.
I triple it.
That is, all Time, from the very beginning to the yet-to-be end is a sub-concept under the will and creation and perception of God. He can take any person and view their existence from the very first parent through a contiguous timeline that leads right up to their life, and through to the end of their still-being-lived life. I believe that is what best explains the aporia of “free will” vs. “God knows what you're going to do.” That He can see in advance what our choice will be does not dictate our choosing. We still have that power.
So, I guess to me, it doesn't make sense that something in Time would occur before God, which He created, and then He would have to escape from his creation to go back and create himself. To me, it makes more sense that there first existed an existence (God) more powerful than Man is able to conceive of, and that that existence created such things as Time, matter, anti-matter, the universe, its contents, the elements, the compounds and then life. And, yes, in my view, He did create that life with the ability to evolve...but I believe that life can only evolve within its own genetic limitations, never evolving from one species to another.
Isn't that called hedging your bet?
Which is precisely what Dostoyevsky concluded in The Brothers Karamazov: If there is no God, all things are permissible.
The Left — historically the fools at the helm in glacier-ridden waters who never, never, never learn the law of unintended consequences — ought to be careful what they wish for. They may not find the communist/socialist state they desire, but a brutal theocracy that will eliminate them first.
Read CS Lewis “Screwtape Letters” while having a beer. Or get the book-on-tape (John Cleese!). When you’re done, track down the sequel essay ‘Screwtape Proposes a Toast’. Merry Christmas.
I suppose I disagree with the majority opinion around here. I think young people, who in many instances have a keen sense of right and wrong, who seek justice, who are idealistic, can be severely harmed in their very soul by those who seek to tear down their faith. An adolescent/young adult is just learning that there are bad endings in life, sometimes, that the good guy doesn’t always win, and some of those intelligent young people turn to the faith of their childhood to help see them through the maturing process, until they can say with confidence, “Who cares what the world thinks, the Lord is my Shepherd.” Someone who attacks their faith, who undermines it, who destroys it, can cause irreparable harm, and even cause such a vulnerable young person to lose all hope. I am quite certain that those people will wash their hands, like Pilate, and absolve themselves of all blame, saying the young person must have been unstable, or must have had only shallow beliefs, or must have been mentally ill. Aren’t we all, at certain times in our lives? It is my belief that Almighty God will call those who harm those young souls to account before His throne.
Well said!
later
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