(January 20, 2017 at 4:11 am)Godschild Wrote: The God of the OT and the God of the NT are the one and same. When God said He was unchanging He meant from the beginning of time and forever. Christ said He was the alpha and the omega, meaning He has always been and will always be, never ending and never changing. Christ, the Father and Holy Spirit are the God of the OT one and the same.
They're not the same to the Jews. They're not even the same to many Christian denominations (Jehovah's Witnesses, for example) that teach that they're two separate people and that the Holy Spirit is not a person at all. And there are many passages that can be used to advance those ideas. This is what I mean about the divergence between religions and even within religions.
Quote:He doesn't force us nor make us jump through hoops, He only says to believe. Then all one has to do is trust ie. have faith He will change us according to what the scriptures say.
This is an example of the saying that "when you believe, then you will see." God doesn't need anything from us in order to reveal himself. He hides in spite of knowing that keeping humanity in the dark will cost many of them the chance at heaven, to say nothing of the awful things they do to one another in the meantime (and sometimes in his name). Due to his vast power, he cannot be doing it out of cowardice. If he is not imaginary then he is capricious and cruel.
Quote:I already know these things to an extent and I want reject God, I have rejected what He has said many times it's called sin.But sin is part of a condition visited upon humanity. You don't reject god by sinning any more than you rejected your parents when you disobeyed them. To reject them would mean turning your back and walking away from them, wanting nothing more to do with them. That is how Adam and Eve (and Satan, etc) rejected god. They did not simply stumble and decide not to accept correction. They willfully defied god and turned away from him.
Quote:The whole of Sodom and Gemorrah, Judas and all those who were destroyed by the flood. A few examples.Surely Judas knew that betraying Jesus meant his death, didn't he? If he knew for certain that Jesus was God and that he offered salvation from suffering and death, he understood that he was damning himself by his action. Otherwise, we must believe that after three years of following God around and watching and hearing him, he nonetheless thought it a good idea to hand him over to his enemies. What would drive a person to such an act in light of what he must have known?
Quote:I was referring to the atheist rejection of God and the hundreds of millions of Christians. The other religions are not my concern in this part of the discussion. I should have explained my thought better, sorry. He shows His love for you in many ways, you refuse to recognize them. Your life for starters, not forcing you to accept Him or what He did through Jesus, He could turn you into a little robot but, you would find ways to complain about that, no doubt.I would need to believe that God existed in order to reject him. I find the claims and arguments for his existence unconvincing once I decided to challenge my presuppositions. For God to be real I would need to acknowledge more than just the ways he shows love. I would need to acknowledge that he allows suffering, that he sometimes inflicted it himself, and that he threatens to inflict it for an eternity to a great many people. I understand that the response will be to shift the blame, but that doesn't make the argument more compelling in light of the qualities that God possesses. I'd like for there to be a God --and for that God to be loving and kind and caring-- because I think that'd be amazing and wonderful. But as the song goes, we can't always get what we want.
Quote:Tell me how is God to transcend who He is when He is perfect, God is completely moral and who He is is the law, He is the righteous God. He can't transcend His own perfect self. That's not logical, it's delusional thinking. That whole primes is an atheistic made up lie.I can only judge God by the standards that we use to judge behavior. If we put him above such considerations then he becomes unpredictable because his actions lack motive and context in the way that ours do. If I decide to kick a child in the head without cause or warning, it's easy to judge that I've done something bad. If God decided to take the same action, he has done something good because he is god and any analysis is thrown out. Why would you assume that an eternity with such a being would not have moments of terror? You assume he will only do 'good' things, but everything he does is good. You will say that arbitrarily harming others is against his nature, but his nature is such that arbitrarily harming others is good. This concept of God --that his actions can only be good because he transcends human morals-- should scare those who believe in him.
Quote:We can go on like this until one of us leaves this forum or dies, as for my part you will never change my mind and as for your mind and heart that's for God to do, all He requires of me is to wittnes. I enjoy our conversation and I thank you for the civility you have shown. If you want this to continue please reply, I'm not sure when I will answer the screen bothers my eyes and I may take a few days off after tomorrow.No problem, GC. As always, my interest is in what others believe and why they believe it. I am not concerned with changing your mind, you seem like a good and decent person and that strikes me as the most important qualities to have. I tend to check the forums every other day now because I'm busy, so there's no need to rush to respond. Take care!
"Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape- like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered."
-Stephen Jay Gould
-Stephen Jay Gould