(June 13, 2013 at 4:00 pm)Maelstrom Wrote: I again ask, if God asks you to kill someone and you believe that it is God speaking to you, will you kill?

They never answer yes or no.

(June 13, 2013 at 4:04 pm)wwjs Wrote:

(June 13, 2013 at 4:00 pm)Maelstrom Wrote: I again ask, if God asks you to kill someone and you believe that it is God speaking to you, will you kill?

They never answer yes or no.

I know this is addressed to theists but I will speak for the rest and say no.

(June 13, 2013 at 1:33 pm)Ryantology Wrote: He won't even reveal himself to you until you bend the knee and do what you're told. That's what A/S/K is. That's also why A/S/K is worthless: you can't get an answer you can trust, unless you place a great deal more trust in your imperfect, glitch-prone human brain than I place in mine.

Ah, no.
When I first bent that knee and God slowly began to reveal himself to me and I began to understand the difference between the God of the bible and the God of my given denomination I was dumb founded. He was not who i though Him to be. Which is why i believe we are made to kneel before God and allow Him to lift us up.

For when we try and stand before what we think is God we miss who God actually is. However when we elect to kneel before God and allow Him to lift us up we are up lifted in the right direction. Where as when we stand we could be facing a mirror and think the being we see is indeed God.

Be honest, you have been reading my post long enough to have seen at least 1 thing you did not know about God that I have been able to back scripturally. I was not raised in the church. None of what I share is passed down by my father or mother or by any church. These things were given to me to share. I formed a picture of God different than the one being taught by the church i was attending. It got to the point where I had to choose between my church and how i chose to honor God (and my wife) I choose my God and my wife. It has taken 10 years to find another church. One who teaches from the pulpit things I had only every heard through my personal study. I say all of this to say that i was not ready to worship a given picture of God. To truly bend that knee is to throw everything away, including everything you learned at church, and allow him to fill in the blanks.

If you can do this you will begin to see a contrast between the God of the bible and every other incarnation of God people may have. If you choose the God of the bible you will be given knoweledge and wisdom of God that exceeds anything you could possiably know. What's more, your will be given revelation first, and then whole passages and chapters will come together to reinforce the picture of God you have been given.

For how many times have you heard someone preach about the nature of God and take a verse from here and pair it with one verse from there and tie it all together with some random bit for the psalms or some obscure verse from revelations?
God does not hide Himself that way. God in hidded in Plain sight, meaning Chapter long passages and whole books written to describe a precept like freedom from the Law.

The God of the bible is not the god you think Him to be. If you bend that knee and will be faithful to what He gives you you will see a driving force in your life that is counter-intuitive to what or how you think things should work. That's God. Not this omni max crap some monk put together 1500 years ago.

Quote:A God truly interested in acquiring a following

Your confusing religions of man with the God of the bible. God is only interested in giving you an oppertunity to choose Him. What you do with that oppertunity is on you.

Quote:and establishing a meaningful relationship, he would not make it a requirement to guess the answer.

There is no guess work here. God told us He put an imprint of Himself on every mans heart. (Even minnie, that's why he argues so) and if we simply take what is given and apply it to A/S/K as we have been told the flood gates will be opened.

Quote:He would not sit, entirely invisble to anyone who is either unwilling to commit to belief or in denial of his existence because of his invisibility. It defeats the purpose.

Who's purpose yours or His?

What if His purpose is not to amass the following you think he needs.
What if the purpose of this life is to provide a place where we can make a choice about where we want to spend eternity, and not blinded by the glory of God or completely mortified by the reality of Hell?

In this life we are completely free to make the choice to live for self or live for God. If we want to know God and know why we should Live for him God has left us a way that we can know. The only thing is we must follow His instructions in order to receive what He has promised.

Quote:Why would he want to limit his relationships to people who just do what they are told, without question, as opposed to those who actually use the brains they were given?

This is untrue. I have asked truly asked and questioned absolutly every single aspect of God I could think of, and of eternity to the reality of Hell and why it was such a bad thing. What I learned? First and foremost dont ask God what you really do not need the answers too. and second Not questioning God is a religion thing. God is open to question, just understand most of the answers come through harsh life experiences... (Per Lot, and me not that I have suffered as lot has suffered or for the same reasons.)

Quote:What sort of relationship can you have with the weakest mental specimens of humanity?

You do not know how much strength it takes to completely submit do you? You know the rebellion you feel? Now Imagine what it would take to over come it with all of your factulities intact. Then imagine what it would take to maintain that submission for life. The strength needed there is far above and beyond what most if not all are capiable of.

Quote: If that's what he wanted, he should have just made us incapable of being skeptical of him.

Questions are not discouraged to the God of the bible (Look at all the stuff the deciples asked over and over again. Yes Jesus pointed to faith several times as the reason something did not work right, but the question it self was never rebuked.

If you ask God a question He will carve an answer on your Heart in such a way as to know the answer came from God. This often times is a painful experience if you have a hard heart. Or you can just ask someone who has asked your question (but the assureances you get are seldom on par with what you get when God answers your question directly.)

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(June 13, 2013 at 2:49 pm)Mister Agenda Wrote: I can't believe the ruler of the universe would be behind a mind-game like this: I'll let you know I'm real if you believe in me, submit to me, and worship me based on what a bunch of Iron Age priests wrote down thousands of years ago.

If there is a God behind that notion, he'd be more worthy of worship if it's a practical joke than if it's what he really wants.

Not a mind game. When someone of true power and authority in our soceity tells you to do XYZ if you want 123, then one does XYZ if He wants 123. Like If I was the little old lady who won that 600 million dollar power ball jackpot and I told you i will give you 100 million dollars if you washed my car with yellow joy liquid soap, rinsed it with bottled water and waxed it with liquid glass, would you wash and wax my car your way? Or would you do it per my instructions to make sure you got what I was offering?

If you would do this (bend your knee to me) for something as trivial as a 100 million dollars, then why would you expect to have God bend his knee before you to give you eternal life?

After all what does it profit a man if he were to loose his soul?

Evidence for a "soul?"


Didn't think so.

(June 13, 2013 at 4:00 pm)Maelstrom Wrote:

(June 13, 2013 at 2:58 pm)Drich Wrote: If 'god' tell you to do something that the bible says do not do it then it is not God telling you to do it.

Your next question should be: "What if God and the bible said kill someone?"

Yet it is one of the more common contradictions in the old testament. God gives the commandment that one shall not kill, then God speaks to men and informs them to kill. Therefore, they kill yet do not incur his wrath.

I again ask, if God asks you to kill someone and you believe that it is God speaking to you, will you kill?

I'm trying to help you out. i gave you the formula you had to use to make your question work. Use the formula I gave you or all I can repeat is the same thing over and over again.

IF I thought God was telling me to do something like kill someone and the bible say that is against what God wants me to do then no matter how much I believe who I am speaking with is God, the bible says it is not God, it is a deceiving spirit. So no i would not kill someone in that situation.

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(June 13, 2013 at 4:04 pm)wwjs Wrote:

(June 13, 2013 at 4:00 pm)Maelstrom Wrote: I again ask, if God asks you to kill someone and you believe that it is God speaking to you, will you kill?

They never answer yes or no.

They do if you ask the right question. Someone keeps putting a clause in the situation that demands a given answer. take the clause away and you have a yes or no situation.

(June 13, 2013 at 4:38 pm)Drich Wrote: it is a deceiving spirit. So no i would not kill someone in that situation.

If it was a deceitful spirit in the bible, then why was God pleased when those whom He informed to kill obeyed Him?

(June 13, 2013 at 4:38 pm)Drich Wrote: IF I thought God was telling me to do something like kill someone and the bible say that is against what God wants me to do then no matter how much I believe who I am speaking with is God, the bible says it is not God, it is a deceiving spirit. So no i would not kill someone in that situation.

Quote:And he said unto them: 'Thus saith the LORD, the God of Israel: Put ye every man his sword upon his thigh, and go to and fro from gate to gate throughout the camp, and slay every man his brother, and every man his companion, and every man his neighbour. And the sons of Levi did according to the word of Moses; and there fell of the people that day about three thousand men.'

I guess Moses had it all wrong then?

(June 13, 2013 at 4:25 pm)Drich Wrote: When I first bent that knee and God slowly began to reveal himself to me and I began to understand the difference between the God of the bible and the God of my given denomination I was dumb founded.*

*emphasis added

You never quite got over that stage, eh?

This is horse shit dude. Speaking as someone who was a firmly believing and worshipping Christian for 25 years, it's nonsense.

There is not a single thing you are experiencing through your faith that I didn't experience in mine. You just like to talk shit to atheists online which I never did.

Let me tell you how strongly I believed. In Southern Baptism you get baptised when you're are saved. But that's just symbolic. As a young child I didn't quite understand that yet. I wanted to get saved at 5. But my mom didn't think I was old enough to understand. She finally relented when at the age of 7 I told her how I had been shaking in fear at night worried that I would die and go to hell.

I didn't even consider critically examining my faith until the later half of my 20's. And it took me a good long while about 5-6 years before I could really reason it out well enough to convince myself. It was really unintentional. If you had told the 25 year old me I'd be an atheist at 35 I would have been highly offended.

I hear about former Christians deconverting in like a month or less. I don't see how that's possible. It was too firmly entrenched in me.

(June 13, 2013 at 4:04 pm)wwjs Wrote:

(June 13, 2013 at 4:00 pm)Maelstrom Wrote: I again ask, if God asks you to kill someone and you believe that it is God speaking to you, will you kill?

They never answer yes or no.

Actually, on another, now defunct atheism board, I posed that question to a fundie Christian and he actually admitted that he would kill someone if God told him to.

(June 13, 2013 at 5:53 pm)Doubting Thomas Wrote:

(June 13, 2013 at 4:04 pm)wwjs Wrote: They never answer yes or no.

Actually, on another, now defunct atheism board, I posed that question to a fundie Christian and he actually admitted that he would kill someone if God told him to.

That is unsettling