Prayer?

[Skepsis]

The problem is you are having to introduce a red herring to make this arguement fit what I have said in this thread. Which I will address in your 'explaination' of God's plan.

It is hardly a red herring if it was introduced through discussion of God's nature and his "plan". It questions the very ability of that God to have a plan which includes choice at all, another issue in contention.
Have I tried to draw attention away from the issue? No, I have simply phrased it in a neater argument.

Which is why God's Righteous Judgements are not considered to be 'justic' For He does not levy a Judgement on incomplete information. therefore a generally accepted 'fairness' is not required.

So his "justice" isn't really just at all, and you get away with it by saying "well, God must know what we don't, and is thus justified". No, justice is justice, and even if God's justice is supreme it cannot cross the line into what I can only think to call perfect injustice, or an exact violation of the meaning of the term.

Did you just not say God's Judgements sickened you? So that would mean not all would find Heaven to their liking. What if you wnet to Heaven and found you had to serve as a Slave for eternity? would you rather be a Slave to God or be seperated from Him?

Slave.
I'd rather be a slave than burn.

Another Red Herring. I said "Belief' was not the deciding factor." I did not say christian morality was.

As per usual you missed the point entirely. I was saying that, if you don't have to believe to go to heaven, then you must be saying we are immoral.
Still, it seems like you believe belief is the deciding factor:
Can I get to heaven without believing that God exists? If not, then belief is the deciding factor.

Eitherway know both Christian and Atheist morality fall far short of earning on a spot in Heaven via their deeds. for no matter what version of 'morality' you adopt it is a personal version of the righteousness we have been called to with the sin we are willing to incoperate (live with) set into that standard. which makes our 'morality' (which ever version) Meaningless before God.

Wow, so you do see belief as the deciding factor after all. You see belief as the deciding factor, yet have no proof of God to offer to the skeptic and feel justified "helping" the spiritually needy in an atheist forum?

Belief is the catalist for this whole process.

So, yes.

This next bit is the Red Herring I mentioned in the beginning of this post:

Red herrings are purposeful diversion set to avoid the topic. I feel more than justified questioning the nature of your God in reference to his "plan".

what is the nature of God as you understand it? Do you have supporting scripture to back these assertions? If not, how can you have so much intimate knoweledge of a God you say does not exist and then know Him better than one who has spent 20 or so years studying Him from the bible?

I forgot the cardinal rule of religion- everyone's God/god/g-d/gods is/are different. Sorry.
Tell me, does God know my whole life and how it will play out?
Did he know the details of everything in creation before he created it?
Depending on those answers, I can proceed with the argument.

This straw man all kinda falls apart when your forced to work with only the stated nature of God, as per the bible.

You don't understand fallacies at all. Don't accuse people of committing them when you don't know what they are in the first place.
I was working with information from most other Christians I have come into contact with, not your personal interpretations. Remember, cherry-picking is a staple if you want to keep your faith.

Ok I see now what you are saying. My arguement says we are only garanteed one choice. not that we are limited to one choice.

You didn't really answer my question. Can we make choices with everything in our lives, or not? If it is somewhere in between, then you will have to justify it.

Again how do you know your prayers have not been answered?

I am an atheist on a track for hellfire. lol.

you can only say for certain that your prayers have not been answered the way you thought they should be answered.

If I no longer have the ability to become a Christian (unless proper evidence comes up) then I'd say they weren't answered at all. Why? because that was the only point in my life that I could have been saved from my doubts.

Do you truly not see they are linked?

I know it was long, but read my post. I explained that they were linked but that unanswered prayer has nothing to do with why I don't believe in a God.

You said you did not goto Church, you did not read the bible, yet you felt like you knew God well enough to make wishes, at an age when God is perceived to be a great wizard anyway, and based on what happened here you have changed the rest of your life... Respectfully, in your estimation how is this not a 'half assed' attempt?

When asking a being with infinite time on his hands and the power to do anything it is hard to be half-assed. To be honest, I think the month I spend pleading with God was more of a waste of time than anything.

In the passage of Luke 11 that i posted it says we are to Ask, Seek and Knock for the Holy Spirit. For He will provide the 'proof' we all seeks (and many other things that will sustain belief as well.) We ask in prayer (you did ask, sort of if you are willing to take a very liberal interpertation of prayer) You did not seek, for we seek in the bible, in Church, and in discussions like this. and you did not knock. Which has one asking and seeking till He gets what He wants. One could potentially spend a life time knocking, but it is usally limited to the hardness of one heart. (willingness to let their sins of choice go)

Alright, this is the crux of the matter. Only those that really, really want to believe would spend their life begging a god to answer their prayers. This means that they would likely only last a couple months before something made them believe for some reason or another that directly correlate with their want to believe.
You said you prayed for an answer from all Gods. Why the hell was that "seeking" while my prayer to all Gods was not? I did use the bible to guide my prayers, asking God to provide personal revelation. That is "seeking". I did both of the important parts but left out the part that only those dedicated to believing anyway would follow.
Essentially you are offering a spiced-up version of self indoctrination.

again How do you KNOW this is not what is happening now?

I am an antitheist. I scorn religion for it's very existence, but patiently wait for it to pass away like all other myth... with gentle urging.

Why do you assume God had to give you want you wanted in the way you were asking? God knows you better than that. I was a youth minister for a while and I know better than to grant a wish to a 13 year old without restrictions or modifications. Especially a wish dealing with the knoweledge or wisdom of God. If you asked God to answer a wish that a wizard would grant, then you at 13 are establishing God as a wizard in your minds eye.

Essentially God is a wizard... but that isn't the point. If you are saying that he is so impotent that he cannot exert himself in a way that cannot be chalked up to those outside your bubble to confirmation bias?

For what would happen to you and your faith when you found out that God was not the wizard who 'prooved' Himself to you when you were 13?

Couldn't be worse than making me an antitheist, I suppose.

would you have God lie to you? Or is the God of the universe creator of all things bound bound to change His nature to fit your finite understanding of who He is supposed to be?

All you have to offer is clever ways to keep yourself from exclaiming "this is bullshit" when praying or thinking about God. God doesn't answer your prayers in any way that impacts reality? Nah, he is just doing whats best. Prayed for your friend to win that race and she fell down the hill and in an unbelievable turn of bad luck she lost her life's passion to broken leg bones? He's... doing something there, surely.
Or rather, as the sane person would see it, he isn't doing shit.
Sorry, it's just you and your belief.

again Now what if in order for you to change your understanding of God you had to learn to question and resolve issues that you could not get past, while doing what you would have done if God answered your prayer the way you wanted it answered?

That won't happen anytime soon, unless someone comes up with a brilliant and compelling evidence for the existence of God.

If God was looking to change your understanding of Him by forcing you to seek and ask,(BTW don't look now but this is exactly what you are doing) then endowing you with a good measure of skeptisim would be an answer to your orginal prayer.

There he goes, removing free will again. Man, I wish God would butt out of my business and quit forcing me to do things. Too bad that isn't a viable excuse in court.

The only question now is, what will you do with this answered prayer? Will you seek God? Or will you seek a philosphy that allows you to further seperate yourself from Him?

You mean skepticism. Yes, I will seek to further myself from any delusion where belief is founded without evidence to back it up, just like any sane person should.

Two observations. 1) you haven't lived your life yet, so you do not know what you will do. 2) you do not know God did not answer your prayer.

Two observations:
1) Yes I have, I was talking about the life I have already lived. I do not currently base my life on an unanswered prayer and I never will.
2) If I die an antitheist can I know for sure then? If I die tomorrow in an accident, can I be sure?
Well, no... because after I die, I'm dead. But you see the point.

He already has, you just have to accept this salvation.

Accepting it entails believing something for which there is no evidence in a system that is completely illogical. Accepting repentance for something that he had planned from the start? Sorry, I don't think so.

So to turn you over to the sin you are already commiting is nothing that hasn't already happened. the only difference is how you feel about sin and how you feel about God. Your heart now reflects your actions.

I used that rhetoric primarily for effect.

It's not just about asking questions it about living them and the answers that follow.

I agree.

The only difference I see is the order in which you have decided to walk this portion of the path and the amount of time you will spend here.

So you were a skeptic? What made you accept something that is completely unevidenced? Don't give me some crap about how you were saved when it was really only you convincing yourself that Xtainity is right, because that is the best you have had to offer here.

11 Faith is what makes real the things we hope for. It is proof of what we cannot see. 2 God was pleased with the people who lived a long time ago because they had faith like this.

If this is the easy to read version, I'd say I'm still quite on target.
Wishful thinking makes real what we hope for, per the individual. It isn't, however, proof of anything.[/quote]