Why knocking is so important.

[FlowingFlame]

All Bolds are mine.

Edit: Fixed Link.

Not only did I assume this i demonstrated it.

Because Kusa's Atheism like your own Atheism is caused by the lack of evidence of what you thought God was.

Given that I've yet to say the reasons for my non-belief you're simply pulling assumptions out of your ass. You're overgeneralizing of a group who, by its very nature, are disconnected by their own personal cause and reason is astounding. Or at least it would be if it didn't happen so often.

Now the only other option was that your belief was correct and you both received 'Proof' of God in the way of the Holy Spirit, and you simply turned you back on Him anyway. If this happened then that makes you a misotheist and not an atheist. Which is why i prefaced my arguement with "Your Atheism is caused by..."

Other options:
1. God doesn't exist and you're interpreting a book of bronze age myths, many of them stolen from older myths, as truth.
2. Mistranslations/destroyed books/missing manuscripts have skewed the actual messages to be so incorrect as to be useless.
3. God predeterminately hardened my heart. Romans 9 comes to mind.
4. The so called "Proof of God" hasn't come yet.

And it can go on and on.

Also, assumption upon assumption. You assume I ever held an actual beliefs. You assume I require proof as a foundation for believing. You assume I ever received anything to begin with to turn my back on. It wasn't an argument, it was blind assertion based on preconceptions about Atheists.

But hey, for shits and giggles let's say the Holy Spirit gave me Proof of God and I turned my back on it. Wouldn't that be a failure on the part of the message if it wasn't enough for me at that point in my life to accept it? Shouldn't God know I would find some aspect of it disagreeable to the point of rebellion? I would posit that whatever God's message it must be pretty lousy if even Angels, beings created perfect, IN paradise, face to face with God chose to rebel against him.

-or- I just whiped you with some good ole fashion logic and reasoning.

Are you fucking kidding me? Logic and Reasoning =\= Making up your opponents view for them and then making sweeping assumptions about an infinitely diverse group of people. All you've done is shown yourself to be a bit of an arrogant prick that assumes he knows all the answers. That in itself is bad form but you also failed to address my point. There are 41,000+ denominations of Christianity and many of them can and do disagree with you. Your 'whipping' technique is laughable.

Again basic logic and reasoning..
My primary parameter in what you quoted, was "that we are to seek God as presented in the bible."

God being a Father would immediately disqualify the lesbian theory. Secondly if we are using the bible as a guidline God has identified homosexuality as a sin. God is sinless therefore again God can not qualify as a lesbian.

If God can't turn into a woman than he isn't all powerful. Hell, I find a being with the powers described of It having a gender at all to be hilarious and it simply smacks of Bronze Age tribesman logic.

Also, does It's "mysterious ways" have limits or something? Basic logic and reasoning would say that an All Powerful being can do anything.

Two reasons come to mind right away Psalm 23 more over the bit where "God leads us not into temptation and He delivers us from evil.." and the Story of the prodigal son/gay daughter (in this case.) In the story the father did not take the son and show him how the best ways to party. He simply let Him go to do what suited him, and waited for his return.

If your gay it's because that is what suits you. when you want to return home then know your Father has made perperations for you to be able to do that.

I disagree with this in multiple ways.

Firstly, Adam and Eve. Put a young child in a room with a box and tell them not to look at what's inside it and then leave the room. The vast majority of the time they're going to look in the box because you created the idea that there was something interesting inside it. This is temptation. Substitute the Tree of Knowledge (Stupidly, the one thing they would need to know what they were doing is wrong in the first place) and voila, God providing temptation. If you want to say it was the Serpent that did the tempting then God either:

A) Let it happen. in which case he's not all loving because he cursed us all for it.
B) Couldn't stop it from happening. In which case he's neither all powerful or all loving because he cursed us all for it.
C) Didn't know it was happening. (He does lose track of Adam in the Garden at one point so...) In which case he lacks all three divine properties.

Second way I disagree is that I was born like this. I have never desired a man physically or emotionally, and even more telling is that the smell of a man's sweat, despite years of prolonged exposure at work, makes me sick to my stomach. Not being metaphorical here, it literally makes me feel ill. Even if I did "want to come home" as you so eloquently put 'bang dudes', I simply could not and to force myself to do so would be my literal Hell on Earth.

I'm definitely not gay because it suits me, Lesbianism IS my normal and I've seen Christian interpretations of these so called "preparations" for this like "pray the gay away" clinics that lead many people, especially teenagers, to deeper depression and suicide.

Again, there are tons of Christians that have completely different views than you.

Actually no. I was brought up into thinking God hates fags, I had to change that thought, move from what was comfortable to me and embrace what the bible actually says God says about homosexuals.

That it is a sexual sin like anyother and needs the same forgiveness that I myself needed. I wanted their to be a great gulf between my sins and that of the 'gays.' I found out their wasn't.

So no. God was not who i wanted Him to be.

Honestly, good for you. Takes a lot of open mindedness to take steps like that. Hell, a lot of Christians would regard that as a slippery slope to a sinful life. Now just take a few more steps and it'll be even better. ^_^

maybe you could be more antisemetic and ask why God did not help the germans wipe them out all together.

Dodging the point I was making. God was tearing shit up all the time, now all we get is the occasional appearance on toast or a leaky wall or some other thing that can always be attributed to chance.

You do not seem to be aware of what the book of Judges is about.
Everything in Judges 1&2 is about the punishment of Israel. Both book catalog a cycle of sin, punishment in the way of God handing the jews over to their enemies, the jews repenting, God delivering them, and the process repeating over and over each time getting worse and worse.

So an example in Judges 1 would be an example of God handing the jews over to their enemies.

Who is to say this is not happening now?

Again assuming everybody interprets every book of the bible the same... which they obviously don't given the 41,000+ denominations of Christianity. Are you telling me that I can't read a passage stating that God took part in battle (whether in person or in spirit) and lost to superior weaponry and read it for what it is? Given that I think the Bible was written by and for Bronze Age tribesman it makes perfect sense to me that a highly advanced weapon would instill this kind of response in the writer.

The idea of people "Seeking the God of the Bible, whatever the outcome." seems to go out the window if it doesn't agree with your specific point of view. I seek, I find only old stories written by barbarians with little understanding of the world and universe.

Again prodigal son. When a rebellious son wants to leave God let him go. If you think God should act differently, then perhaps this is where your house built on the sand has failed you and the reason why you do not see or hear from God.

Or perhaps God never existed in the first place and the stories are just stories. Given that I can prove huge chunks of the bible as factually inaccurate with simply science and study of history...

There are many many happenings that can not be explained, so rather than give God any credit they are explained as anomalies or 'mutations.'

Or as so called miracles which many, many, MANY Christians love to point to as evidence of the Divine. Hence my point. If God was actually sending them then his production values have shrunk immensely.

For the Bible based Christian it is not the reward. Heaven for the Bible Based Christian is simply a venue, where our most precious commodities are common place building materials. Your think of catholisim or Muslim beliefs in the after life.

No True Scotsman!

Bold should read "My incredibly specific set of beliefs based on my personal interpretations of the Bible" You assume all Christians who base their faith in the Bible are like you and you couldn't be more wrong. Like I said, 41,000+ different denominations, many of which condemn many of the others.

Also, if you think every single solitary "Bible based Christian" isn't motivated by reward then you just don't know people.

ooo, goodie I likes it when use guys gets froggy and what to play with scripture.

Feeling's mutual. There's always a book or verse that contradicts what's being said.

Again for the bible based Christian the reward is not the goal. I did not say we weren't getting anything. For the Muslim paradise/heaven is the end goal. For the Christian Heaven is simply a venue where our most precious things are common place. This means what we hold up as precious is meaningless. This implies that what we have enstore far exceeds anything we can currently imagine. What good is a reward to you now can not pathom? So then the reward becomes a secondary measure to what we have been assured of. A Relationship with God.

In which case separating the two, venue (heaven) and reward (relationship with God), is just an arbitrary action in order to put you on a pedestal above other religions and one of the worst cases of Special Pleading I've ever seen. You're damn well doing it for a reward, you just think yours is special. This desperation to elevate yourself above other faiths is so petty and lacking in humility that it's honestly disappointing.

Can you even accept that the 'reward' other people spend their entire life seeking means just as much to them as yours does to you? I'm honestly asking here!

Because I dont have a problem with sending unbelievers to Hell. For them it is better than their alternitive. It is a point of mercy.

Personally I don't think people deserve to be TORTURED FOREVER for disagreeing with me. Even more so if the method I used to try and convince them was an ancient collection of Bronze Age myths, riddled with easily disprovable facts and events, delivered by groups of people so mired with greed, corruption, and petty hate for one another that they often appear so much worse than the people they condemn.

Sadly, I don't think we can be friends because of this. I've seen an ugliness in you through this group of responses. A petty and vindictive nature that has been absent from the decent Christians I've befriended throughout my life. Altogether disappointing.