(March 11, 2014 at 7:47 pm)Deidre32 Wrote: Let me ask. Why do you presume that mankind didn't come up with this, and ''assigned'' it to a Deity? (thereby creating a fictional tale) You can't develop a powerful following, if you just teach people to search within themselves for happiness, my friend. If you believe in Jesus' words, he even stated, that the 'kingdom of God is in each of us.' Yes?
Might that simply mean, in laymen terms...that the key to happiness lies within us?
If a god exists, he isn't any ''version'' that is out there 'on the market.' lol My opinion. The God that you worship, has the attributes of a petulent child one minute, and an ogre the next...and then in the NT, he becomes a man? Filled with love and mercy? Why? Why is this story necessary? Why does the Bible talk of talking serpents, and seas parting, and giants killing people, and so on...this doesn't sound like folklore to you? Because it's a 'popular' religion so you believe it? I'm honestly asking you, I'm not being rhetorical.
Believing in leprechauns are really not that far fetched, if you can believe all that. ;=)
When I read through the Bible I do not try to make everything I read fit into this neat little box labeled "how the world is today".
There are things recorded in the Bible in the Old Testament that just do not happen today. I accept it. I accept that there were people who were abnormally large that existed at certain times in history. I don't know this for sure, but it does not seem to me to be anything like folklore or something so crazy and wild as to be prima facie impossible.
I guess it all depends on how you view reality. I am not a naturalist. I do not think reality can be explained by appealing only to natural processes acting on matter over time.
I believe God exists and that He made the world and the people in it. I also believe people have messed up and done evil with what God has given them. I in a sense, expect to read about divine miracles and stuff like that because I expect God to act within the world He has made.
I do not start out a priori with the view that miracles are impossible or that supernatural events cannot happen. Nor do I think everything that happens is because some spirit or demon or angel caused it to happen.
In scripture, there is a balance. God working in His world in such a way that His existence is clear to them that are open to it and not clear to those who are not open to it.
I see the very existence of life as a miracle in the sense that life is ultimately due to a divine will, not merely atoms and molecules colliding in just the right way over time with no divine superintendence. Even if God used "evolution" to make us, He still was superintending the process, guiding it with His omniscience and sustaining it with His omnipotence.
So I think it depends on one's perspective.
Two people can look at one object i.e. the Cross and see two totally different things.
God's Kingdom is not of this world. It is a spiritual kingdom. It is eternal. And since it is spiritual, it is not limited to the confines of time and space and matter. That is why Christ said that I will send you the Comforter, The Spirit of Truth who will come to you and abide with you and lead you into all truth. This Spirit of Truth resides within a person and cannot be seen by the eye of sinful man. He exists beyond the five senses. You can see His power and love through the actions of them that He indwells, but you cannot "see Him" except through the eyes of faith.
