To explain knowledge of God

[pocaracas]

What if you're convinced you're worshiping the god of the bible, but you're worshiping something not quite like it?
One of

God has promised to test what we build with floods and fire.. In other words He will put our faiths to the test. That is what "Trials" are for. So we know whether or not what we have built has been built on the foundation of Jesus Christ as God of the bible has provided.

I can't understand the requirement of faith.
Why would such a being as a god require that we believe in it without any evidence for such belief?
Why should we have to take the word of other people?
Why should we have to take the word of other people who wrote that word for future generations?

Why, then, must such faith be put to any test?
What does this entity stand to gain through faith that it couldn't get through knowledge and instilling respect?

The requirement of faith, to me, makes god look like a human construct... a cunning construct, or one that has been refined throughout the millennia, but one that takes advantage of certain pitfalls of the human mind.
Not all human minds are receptive to such pitfalls, as is clear by the timeless tradition of atheism, but most are... and most do fall prey to them, regardless of the god which is being believed in. The mechanism is the same.

It's not that we don't want to worship any god... it's that we don't accept the premise that such an entity exists to begin with.
So we look at the world around us and follow where it leads.

That's not true. A/S/K is how we look for anything of consenquence in the world around us.. Just look at the opposition and push back I am getting trying to get you guys to just put the same effort into looking for God as you would looking for anything else.

Really? not true?
Did Newton not experience gravity far before formulating how it works?
Did Archimedes not get in the bath before he had his Eureka moment?
Did Edison not observe lightning before figuring out how to work with electricity?

Sometimes, I feel like it would be good to have some "history of science" classes. Not a science class in the classical sense, just something that gives you context and chronology to the accumulated body of knowledge that mankind came to call "science". This is something I find terribly lacking in most theists.

Finally, you wish that we look for god, and yet, provide no god for us to look for. You provide us with mental exploits which manage to convince a considerable segment of the population. But which, knowing beforehand of their exploitative nature, we logically refuse to undertake them!
What you register as a opposition is us simply refusing to let our mental guard down. We know full well how wrong that method can be. And we've been telling you this all along and, just when I thought you had registered that... you stick with it...

Question(s): how did people come to know the god of the bible, before there was a bible?

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Do you know of the parables of the talents? It is where Jesus tells the story of a Land owner who had several servants. To the first He gave 3 talents/bags of Gold. to the next 2 and to the last 1 talent. each according to his/her ablities. The land owner went away for a while then came back. when he came back he summoned the servants to see what they did with the money he gave them.
The first doubled what he was given and gave his master 6 bags, the second also doubled his portion and returned 4 bags the third buried/hid/ignored what he was given because he was afraid of using it. the servant thought it better to return what was given, rather invest the money he was intrusted with.. The Land owner condemned the last servant for not being faithful to what he had been given. took what the last man had and gave it to the guy with 6 bags of gold.

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The same is true here replace bags of gold with the bible. Our generation has the bible therefore responsiable for it's content in our beliefs. the generations who did not have it are only responsiable for what God put infront of them. In short God will judge us based on what we truly had been exposed to.

I've been exposed to lots of things. And they've brought me to be as I am.
Like Ricky Gervais said, "if god is real, then why did he make me an atheist?"

You too have been exposed to the Qur'an, why don't you keep to it?
It is one of the latest "true" interactions of the divine with mankind... it should be even more "true" than the christian bible... and yet, you don't see it that way... why?

Were they not intended to go to heaven?
Was there no sifting?

I'm assuming you do not know they had literal prophets to directly tell them the will of God. What the prophets of God said and did was written down compiled and that is where we get the bible. So before the bible man had the orginal source material to work with.

Come on, man. Think out of the box.... China, 4000 years ago. Which prophets?

Why should people desire to "serve God for all eternity"?

What would be better to serve one who literally controls Everything? or to be free in a literal void?

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Put 17th century slavery out of you mind for a second and Imagine what it was to joseph to 'Serve' the Pharroah of Egypt. Yes Joseph was a slave by defination, but at the same time he was literally the #2 guy in all of egypt in his time. He ruled the world power of that day. He was over every other living being in the known world except for the Pharroah himself. now contrast a life like that and all the benfits of privliges contained in it, with being placed in the pacific ocean 10,000 miles from anything doomed to tread water for eternity with no hope of anything other than what you have in your power to speak into existance...

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Are you sure those are the only two options?

Lastly, if the ASK method can yield results even if no god is actually there, why should it be used? It seems like it's flawed at its core.

A/S/K is used all day every day by everyone from screaming for a diaper change to searching for a practical cure for ebolia to finding a mate, to building our next space shuttle.

A/S/K only works if one is willing to keep knocking to he finds what his heart truly wants. If you truly want to find and worship the God of the bible God will honor your efforts if you keep at it.

"he finds what his heart truly wants. "
If you truly want to find and worship the god of the Qur'an, god will honor your efforts if you keep at it.
If you truly want to find and worship the gods of the Vedas, the gods will honor your efforts if you keep at it.
If you truly want to find and worship the god of the Valhalla, god will honor your efforts if you keep at it.

Can't you yet see how flawed the method is?