Quote:Non-belief doesn’t involve hatred for God; you can’t hate something that doesn’t exist.
But let us pretend that at some point in the future the Lord Jesus revealed himself to you in such a way that you could not deny His existance without knowingly lying to yourself (for pretend) and you still chose to disbelieve and live in a lala land or something, that would be a form of hating God.
Quote: So even a nonbeliever seeking truth is going to end up finding Christ or God?
How does one ‘pretend’ to seek the truth, or seek it in a hateful way?
See, for me, truth is reality. I am seeking the best explanations for reality and real-life phenomena that are backed by the most comprehensive and non-contradictory evidence. And seeking truth in this way only moves me further away from the god hypothesis, not closer.
I believe that a nonbeliever seeking truth is going to end up finding Christ. And the Church at Vatican II and in the Catechism strongly suggest teh same thing.
Like say you are just claiming to seek the truth just to be cool or something, but your heart really is not in it. Like if all your friends really liked football so you just pretneded to like it to fit in.
Yeah I understand that you are seeking truth and that in your honest search for truth you have come to the conclusion that God does not exist. I think it is good to seek out the truth fearlessly and be honest with yourself. And I beleive God respects those who seek and our honest too. In Christianity faith is a gift from God, and I believe that God does not hold us accountable for what we cannot be held accountable. So you show your love for God in a more difficult way then me and Christians, from my view.
Quote:No, sorry, that doesn't make much sense. If God revealed his existence in some objectively verifiable way, then I would have no choice but to believe. The evidence would be there in front of me, and in front of others too, and I’d be a fool to ignore it. That's like saying 'I have evidence and knowledge that the chair I'm sitting in exists, but I choose not to believe it.' That would be self-delusion, and I'm not a big fan of that.
So unless God/Christ unambiguously reveals himself one day (which I think is highly unlikely), I cannot go through life just having blind faith in his existence.
And if what you say is true the I count you as a fellow Christian, from my view. In other words I beleive that you will go to heaven, if you contine to seek the Truth in charity. I would not call you a Christian because naturally you don't want to be called a Christian becuase you don't believe in Jesus lol. And I don't mean to be disrespcetful.
But one thing to realize about human existance is that because we are limited in our capacities we cannot know anything for sure, we can only know it to like a 99%. For example, just becuase you see a chair does not mean that you are not in a virtual reality program, and there is no chair. You accept on faith that your senses are not failing you under certain conditions, like when youre sober and the lighting is good and you are not under some other major stresser that may cause you to hallucinate.
But with saying that I know waht oyu mean, if Jesus was in front of you and asked you to put your fingers into the wounds in his hands and then he floated up to heaven you would believe. lol
Quote:I do find the origins of religion quite interesting. Some human ancestors had to have come up with the idea of a god at some point, most likely to explain natural phenomena that they didn’t understand. The concept of ‘god’ was then passed down through the generations, and entire mythologies evolved around it.
Yeah it is very interesting and that is probably the way things developed for the most part.
