The notion that there is an eternally powerful being who loves and cares for you and is going to let you enter his eternal paradise if you follow his commands is LESS reassuring than your life is what you make it and ultimately you will die and not exist. Hmmm... Anyway, again your highlighting the point I made above; namely that without God in your life you think immorality must be the order of the day. Speaking of reassurance I can honestly say that I am very glad that people who cannot conceive of acting morally without eternal reward or punishment do believe in God. It's better for us all that way. Sigh... what books have you read then? What points in particular do you believe are 'utter crap'? As for credible evidence there is so much it's hard to chose from, what in particular would you like evidence of? Transitional fossils, genetic evidence, speciation? The fact that you could honestly believe that there is more evidence for creationism really shows me you have not examined this issue at all and once again I would suggest that a much more fruitful approach for you would be to not posit your religious beliefs on the foundation that evolution must be false. It is a very silly position to take. Doesn't seem like justice to me... someone lives a good life but doesn't believe in God ergo they must suffer for all eternity. That's not just. Someone worships a different God and lives a wonderful life helping the poor... oops too bad, wrong God, off to hell for all eternity. That's not just. That's an egomaniac who cares more about being worshipped than how people lived their lives.
I worked at a location that felt because the owner of the place was doing great after a very touch and go operation felt he was watched over personally by god. Got so bad I was about to quit. Then the person promply falls over and dies of a heart attack in front of several of them (children) they try to save him but can't, dead. Things took a different tact and it was worse than before. I left, it was crazy the way they really thought, and you really did not know until death visited them. Very pathetic, and the folks had a major meltdown as a family. I watched a movie "Meet Joe Black" I enjoyed the movie, but the premise is nuts. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meet_Joe_Black Gary
thanks for that, but I disagree Or rather, either eternal bliss and paradise or eternal torment. It's not comforting to those who don't beleive that there is a chance that they would spend eternity in torment. There's a flipside. It's not all sunshine and roses. yeah, that's a bit more comforting than (once again) the possibility of hell. Find me something that can be fully justified in everything and not only will I beleive you- I'll give you a gold star. In the bible it SAYS that some things about God the human mind just can't comprehend, so I can feel safe that I can't understand everything. I'm not so conceited as to think that I'm intelligent enough to figure out anything. (copy and paste) Or rather, either eternal bliss and paradise or eternal torment. It's not comforting to those who don't beleive that there is a chance that they would spend eternity in torment. There's a flipside. It's not all sunshine and roses. Never said immorality is the order of the day. I just said there's no consequences for the immoral things you do. Also, there's no reward for me acting morally. Real Christianity had absolutley nothing to do with acting morally or what you do period. I beleive that there is nothing in the world that I can do to become good enough to go to heaven- and that every bad thing I do should condemn me to hell. The only thing I can do is fall back on grace- because that's all there is to fall back on. actually, I should have worded that differently, I apologise. I've heard arguments from both sides, by scientists. Now, I'm sure you've heard plenty from evolutionist side- so I'll show you something from this side. It's a little long, so I put the actual argument in bold- the first part is basically just introducing people to number facts like "There are 3,600 seconds in an hour; or 86,400 seconds in a day; or about 31,557,600 seconds in a year." to give them a rough feel for how long certain amounts of time are. You might still want to read it, but you might not. Here it is: "Numbers - we all use them everyday. We use them in so many different ways. All too often, we are mesmerized by them. Numbers, however, are like technology, they are neutral; they are neither good nor bad. It is only what people do with technology and numbers that is good or bad. Evolutionists live and die by eight words: “Give me enough time, and anything can happen.” They make statements like: “If all the monkeys in the world were sitting at all the typewriters in the world, eventually they would produce the works of Shakespeare by random chance.” This is all pure nonsense. It is only smoke and mirrors. This is the evolutionists’ use of stage magic to try and support a fairy tale for adults. It doesn’t matter how much time you might have, some things simply will not happen in spite of all the faith you might have. For example, you will never throw the number seven (the most common combination of two die), with a fair pair of dice, 27 straight times. It is mathematically impossible. It will not happen by random chance; it cannot happen! Faith or no faith, it will not happen. In general, the public has been dulled to the power of numbers. Evolutionists have taught in public schools that the earth and universe are millions and billions of years old. I certainly was taught that, and so many of us have so readily accepted it. Perhaps this is because we hear about the Federal and State governments having trillions of dollars in debt, or spending millions and billions of dollars for this or that. It all seems so plausible; after all we hear such numbers around us all the time. But, is it all that plausible? Allow me to start off with a few simple examples to get a feel for the power of numbers like these. There are 3,600 seconds in an hour; or 86,400 seconds in a day; or about 31,557,600 seconds in a year. That means that I have already lived over 1,783,004,400 (1.78 billion) seconds. Gee, it doesn’t seem that long to me. Of course, if the earth is about 6,000 years old it is only 189,345,600,000 (189 trillion) seconds old. On the other hand if it were as old as evolutionists say it is (4.6 billion years) then it is 14,516,496,000,000,000 seconds old. Well, this is just for fun. What do numbers like this actually teach us? If I wanted to spend $1,000,000,000 in a year, I would have to spend $31.69 per second, or $114,077.12 per hour, or $2,737,851 per day. At 5% simple interest, the interest payment on 1,000,000,000 is $136,893 per day. That sounds downright unreasonable. I would like to take you on a journey from the smallest time unit to the largest time unit and let’s see what we learn from the experience and how it applies to evolutionism and creationism. The microscope was invented in 1590 and the telescope was invented in 1608. These instruments allow us to probe at opposite ends of the spectrum of length. At this time, the use of the latest equipment allows us to measure across 61 powers of ten. The longest length being the current estimated width of the universe (15 billion light-years: a light-year is about 6 trillion miles) called a Hubble length and named after the American astronomer Edwin Hubble. The smallest conceivable length is called a Planck length (0.00000000000000000 00000000000000016 centimeters) and is named after the physicist Max Planck. The smallest time unit is the Planck time (yep, same guy) and is about 10 to the minus 43rd power of a second. The smallest usable time is called an attosecond (a billionth of a billionth of a second). We have made lasers that can emit a light burst for as little as 250 attoseconds. Going up one step in magnitude we have the femtosecond (a millionth of a billionth of a second). A single atom vibrates once in 10 to 100 femtoseconds. The chemical reaction in the human eye that allows us to see takes 200 femtoseconds to complete. Going up another step brings us to the picosecond (a thousandth of a billionth of a second). This is the arena in which transistor circuits work. Next step up is the nanosecond (a billionth of a second). Light travels a little less than a foot in one nanosecond. Up again, we have the microsecond (a millionth of a second). Light travels about 1,000 feet in this time; while sound travels only one-third of a millimeter in that time. One step up brings us to the millisecond (a thousandth of a second). This is the shortest camera exposure. A housefly flaps its wings once every three milliseconds, but honeybees are a little slower taking five milliseconds. Our moon is slowing down two milliseconds per year in its orbit around the earth. Next up we have hundredths, tenths and whole seconds. In a tenth of a second you can blink your eye and a hummingbird can beat its wings seven times. In a full second your heart beats once, the earth travels 18 miles in orbit around the sun, and the whole solar system travels 164.4 miles around the center of the galaxy. It takes a little more time, 1.3 seconds, for light to travel from the moon to the earth. Well, now let’s go huge. In a minute a shrew’s heart beats 1,000 times and we speak between 150 to 250 words. It takes eight minutes for light to arrive from the sun. In one hour cells grow and divide once while it takes light reflected from Pluto five hours and 20 minutes to reach earth (it is really way out there). In one day your heart beats about 100,000 times, your lungs process about 11,000 liters of air. In a year the earth orbits the sun. It takes 4.3 years for light to travel from Proxima Centauri to earth. In a century the moon moves away from the earth about 12.5 feet and your beloved CDs are expected to degrade. Next up is the millennia. After that, we go into the ether of evolutionary time frames. The evolutionist talks about millions and billions of years as if they were real. But, have they ever measured such a time? No, most assuredly not! According to evolutionists, if there had ever been a billion years, then it is the amount of time that it would have taken for the solar system to travel four times around the center of the galaxy; the earth to cool down to where life could begin; the oceans to develop; the first living cell to have developed; and, the atmosphere to change from a reducing one to an oxidizing one. As I said before, “this is all pure nonsense.” Evolutionists believe that the earth is 4.6 billion years old. Using the known rate of recession of the moon from the earth, the moon would have been touching the surface of the earth only 1.4 billion years ago. Going back in time we would reach a point where the tides would rise over one mile high twice a day. Conversely, if the moon were in a suitable orbit and moved away at the known rate, the moon should now be out of sight. The circular orbit of the moon also proves that it has not been tugged into an elliptical orbit which it should have been if it were old. Various other arguments follow proving that evolutionary time frames are fictitious. The earth is slowing down in its spin rate. Going back in time using evolutionary thought processes, the earth would spin faster and faster; but this would cause the land masses, which float on the molten core, to be located all along the equator - which they are not. The surface of the earth is eroding primarily from water/ice action. At the current rate of erosion all the continents would be eroded flat in only 14 million years. Mount Everest is 29,000 feet high (348,000 inches). If it eroded only .02 of an inch per year it would be flat in only 14,000,000 years. Using current rates of erosion, there is only 4,500 years worth of accumulated mud at the mouth of the Mississippi. This is also true of the Amazon, Congo, Indus, Ganges, Yangtze, Volga, et. al. If the Mississippi had been eroding the North American continent for millions of years, then the Gulf of Mexico would have been completely filled in by now, which it is not. If we started with a zero amount, the current rate of Helium being released from the ground into the atmosphere would produce all the Helium in the atmosphere in only 2,000,000 years. The atmosphere cannot be 4.6 billion years old. If we started with some Helium, a reasonable assumption, then the atmosphere is much less than 2,000,000 years old and perfectly consistent with 6,000 years old. Is evolution a reasonable, rational, evidence based faith? No! It is an unreasonable, irrational and non-evidence based faith. Evolutionists use numbers in an attempt to make evolution sound reasonable. Creationists may use numbers to prove that creation, a recent creation, is true. The truth is that: “Give me enough time and many things will still never happen.” " how about: God made someone, protected them, let them live on Earth, granted them everything they have (including talents and things like that), gave them plenty of evidence they could have seen if they had just looked, and STILL that person denied Him. In addition to that, they thought that doing all those good things helping to poor actually made up for all this and made them in a better moral position than other people, AND they run off and worship and idol. Sounds like a real "good person" to me. Personally, I think there's no such thing as a "good person." No one, Christian or not, is a "good person." Everyone on Earth (including me) is so ungrateful and it's absolutely amazing that God would ever choose to save ANY of us.
Zandorv1037 Did you by any chance see post #92???? I don't know one christian that thinks they are going to hell, not one. I would also like to add: The idea of a christian going to hell is honestly absurd. The point was that the difference between my position and yours is: There is no good side to my position where death is concerned. But now we have a new problem with your claim. I thought to know God, was to know love? Either that's a lie, or your being dishonest. The fact is, to beat me on this point means God is a tyrant who does nothing but invoke fear in his followers. You don't have to believe me. The fact is I haven't said anything for you to believe. Your the one with a claim, a truth if you will. You can't claim to know something then in the same breath say you don't understand it. If you want to make claims, I suggest you get to understanding what they are. I don't care if you believe in God. I don't like the fact that you have built up a false idea about the rest of us, especially when the idea is based on something that you yourself admit to not fully understanding. (I also don't like the fact that even if I did give you something that was fully justified, you wouldn't really give me a gold star......) What? How do you know which God/Religion to choose then? Trying to figure out something is not being conceited, giving up then claiming to know the truth anyway is being conceited. Again... I don't know one christian that thinks they are going to hell, not one. I would also like to add: The idea of a christian going to hell is honestly absurd. (If you are a "christian" you by definition are not going to hell.) But anyway. I know where I'm going when I die. There is no flip side for us. There is no reassuring factor, no bright side, this is it. No possibility. How can that be more reassuring? It's not. It's a hopeless thought. That's why we have to make the best of things why we are here..... There is no one to catch us if we fall. The only footprints on our beach belong to us. ( If you don't know what the footprint comment means, go here. Lol... Good times.....) With that said, if you want the title so bad, by all means, take it. Your God is definitely scarier than mine. But before you put on that crown I have to ask.... Why follow such an insipid creature? I mean, any being that would instill fear as a way to force worship and prevent sway "especially" in the hearts of those who already love and worship it, is in no way, all loving, absolutely just, or morally inspiring.... Being moral is part of the package. You can't be immoral and go to heaven. In order to stay in the light of forgiveness and be cradled by grace, you have to work for it. Heaven is a reward for that. So your wrong on two counts. 1. You do get a reward for being moral and faithful. 2. You can do something that is good enough to go to heaven...
Zandarov I have to say thank you for taking the time to respond as you have I completely 100% disagree with your viewpoint and I will explain why below but I respect anyone that can engage in a productive discussion by addressing counterpoints. I don't think your responses are at all convincing but you do address the points raised so thanks... Now onto the actual points themselves... Do you personally find the idea of God mostly comforting or mostly terrifying? If Christianity has nothing to do with acting morally or what you do then emmm... why would Christians not be just as likely as non-Christians to behave immorally? Also, your still making my point i.e. the fact that you believe that there are no consequences for moral or immoral actions beyond those meted out by God shows me that you lack the sense that I have that moral actions are in and of themselves good because they tend to reduce the suffering of others and make life all over more pleasant. Would you mind clarifying precisely what popular science books on evolution you have read? As for showing me the creationist side your not showing me anything I have not heard before I actually have looked into this debate in quite some detail and in regards to creationist proponents I've read some of Behe's work (for the ID spin), watched far too many debates with Kent Hovind and read more articles of his than I care to admit, I've also read the articles on a number of creationist websites like the discovery institute and watched numerous debates between various creationists and scientists. The arguments you present have been refuted in depth many times in the past but for one more time here's a number of corrections to some popular misconceptions and the refutations to the main points: Evolution however is not a process that relies on random chance it is a process driven by natural selection... the random chance element relates to mutations but mutations on its own is not how evolution occurs otherwise it would be called the theory of mutation rather than the theory of evolution. Environmental pressures lead to the 'selection' of beneficial mutations... which is not the same thing as pure random chance. . It does matter how much time you have the probability of throwing a pair of dice and coming up with a total of 7, 27 times in a row is infinitismal but it is not a non-existent chance. Regardless of what this creationist wants to believe. Imagine a robot designed to throw 100,000 pairs of dice 30 times a minute still think it would be impossible given enough time for it to get 7X27 in a row? When we are talking about evolution we aren't talking about humans rolling dices we are talking about billions of years. The main arguments are all dealt with on talkorigins but seeing as you find them convincing I doubt you ever have ever checked what REAL scientists say about the myriad of claims made by creationists... the article you cite for instance is from 'Creation Worldview Ministries' and provides NO citation for it's information and yet you accept it as legitimate scientific arguments. Sigh... well here is what proper scientists say- have a look through this index next time to see if the claim has been refuted (http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/list.html): 1. The moon is receding at about 3.8 cm per year. Since the moon is 3.85 × 1010 cm from the earth, this is already consistent, within an order of magnitude, with an earth-moon system billions of years old. 2. The magnitude of tidal friction depends on the arrangement of the continents. In the past, the continents were arranged such that tidal friction, and thus the rates of earth's slowing and the moon's recession, would have been less. The earth's rotation has slowed at a rate of two seconds every 100,000 years (Eicher 1976). 3. The rate of earth's rotation in the distant past can be measured. Corals produce skeletons with both daily layers and yearly patterns, so we can count the number of days per year when the coral grew. Measurements of fossil corals from 180 to 400 million years ago show year lengths from 381 to 410 days, with older corals showing more days per year (Eicher 1976; Scrutton 1970; Wells 1963; 1970). Similarly, days per year can also be computed from growth patterns in mollusks (Pannella 1976; Scrutton 1978) and stromatolites (Mohr 1975; Pannella et al. 1968) and from sediment deposition patterns (Williams 1997). All such measurements are consistent with a gradual rate of earth's slowing for the last 650 million years. 4. The clocks based on the slowing of earth's rotation described above provide an independent method of dating geological layers over most of the fossil record. The data is inconsistent with a young earth. http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CE/CE110.html (There are links to scientific papers at the bottom of every talk origins page so you can go and check up the science if you don't believe it and from here on in I'll just provide the relevant link.) http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CE/CE011.html http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CD/CD501.html http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CE/CE001.html ALL of the arguments are covered in depth in the following article: http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/hovind/howgood-yea.html Young Earth Creationism is the silliest Creationist belief of all. I mean I can understand if someone says look I know all the evidence says this isn't true but it's my religion it's what I believe... but when they try to pretend that all the evidence supports their view is when it gets ridiculous. lol... it's crazy that you can only think of people doing good in order to 'make up' for not believing in the correct God. Whats even more amusing is that right now there is some other religious person who believes in a different God saying the exact same thing about the non-believers in their specific deity. I'm really glad I don't live in your world.
I'm sorry, I should have made this clear beforehand: I meant from a NONCHRISTIAN point of veiw the idea of hell is scary... which is why people wouldn't WANT to beleive it. (NOTICE: I didn't say "everyone in the world who is not a beleiver is like this." just to let you know.) For me it's comforting... but that wasn't even the issue I was adressing. I was just talking about why people wouldn't want to beleive and it's not just me not wanting to beleive that there's nothing out there after death. Beleive me, sometimes I would prefer that. While there's no good, there's also no bad. Meaning it's neutral. It's a neutral death... I would not mind that at all. however, to me thinking that isn't realistic. All I meant by that is that there is nothing out there that can be totally and completely explained... What I meant by my origional comment that I didn't understand it all was that some of it is just so mind-boggling I can't comprehend it. It's like trying to really conceptualize just how tiny we are in comparison to the universe (try looking at a picture of earth compared to the sun then the sun compared to the star Antares) you just can't really comprehend it! you've answered my own question for me. I'll highlight it for you. they gave up and pretend to know the truth anyway. That's being concieted. See my above point for part of this... He's not instilling fear to force worship. I don't worship Him because I'm afraid of Him or hell- I do it out of gratitude and awe. He has in no way instilled fear to create worship. He's only scary to people who don't beleive... and that's because he's just. No, you don't get a reward for being moral or faithful. In the bible it says that even our best is like filthy rags. NOTHING we can do can make up for the evil we do, so none of the morality can be rewarded. As for faithfullness, we aren't rewarded for that! That's not even ours, God gave us even our faithfullness as a gift. Heaven is a token of grace given by God- not a reward for anything we do. I think it's comforting, I meant that the reason many people would not want to beleive is because the idea of hell is terrifying, not that it's terrifying to Christians. Christians are as likely to behave immoraly as non-Christians. I never said that we weren't. We're no better than anyone else. Also, I do know that there are consequences to what you do aside from God's punishment... but those are temporary, not eternal. good actions are good because they reduce suffering on earth and make things overall more pleasant, yes. God can change what reduces suffering though, it's his universe, no law or rule that we know applies. I'm not entirely sure what you're getting at with your ahbove point. I agree with that. I apologize for that- I actually got that through google. There was a Christian scientist who made that argument and that's where I found a very similar one. He has alot of ther arguments to talk about that I think he has plenty of merit to talk about. He beleived in evolution for 27 years and knew so much about it that by the time he was eight he was teaching his classroom about evolution because he knew more about it than the teachers did. I wish I could remember his name and show you some of the other things he talked about... He talked about the fossil record and everything you mentioned above. I'll tell you as soon as I find it (I won't try to put my own adaptation here... I don't want to maim perfectly good scientific reasoning!) Also, I don't understand why you said that last comment. How can you see someone saying, "well, none of the facts support what I think, but I'm beleiving it anyway." Do you think that all Christians are stupid or something? I don't understand. If I'm going to beleive something, there'd better be evidence for it, because there's no reason to beleive things that aren't true. That's idiocy, and I am not an idiot. I never said that that's the only reason people would do good. There are alot of reasons people would do good. If I tried to list them all here it would take an eternity. I just said it doesn't make up for it. Which it doesn't. and yes, that is amusing. I'm confident in my own because of the evidence that backs it up- and don't say there isn't any. If there wasn't any, there would be mo such thing as the "Creationism vs. Evolutionism" debate. No one would be arguing because there'd be nothing to argue with. Likewise, if there was absolutely no evidence for evolution, evolutionists wouldn't have one leg to stand on and there would be no debate. Thanks you for saying that, I should say the same for you. In face I will ^_^. I love to talk about things like these and I do appriciate you questioning what I think and showing me evidence from your side- I don't want to beleive something and then shut my eyes to what the rest of the world has to say. It's great to have someone to debate/converse with about these things that has something credible to say. Many of the things that we have started to tlak about have boiled down to simply having different opinions- and the facts debate could go on forever, I don't think we'd ever really end that one. That is why I think now that I'm going to end my participation in this. I could continue to debate, but this takes up alot of time and effort and I don't think that we would actually go anywhere from here on out. Plus, this is a martial arts forum, and doing this is a very time-consuming thing. You've all been great to talk to, and I've enjoyed exchanging veiws, but I'm out. If I find that scientist's name, I'll give it to you. Bye, guys, if you need me I'll be in the martial arts section of the forum
(If your going to go off and start watching what you say, this is really going to be less fun. :cry: ) I don't care what side of the fence your on, behavior is not neutral. I would also like to add that death is not neutral, it's a completely one sided issue.... (And just for the record. I'm not pretending there is nothing out there, that's just how I see it. It still remains to be seen how someone could be afraid of something they don't believe.) This is exactly why these debates don't go well. There are to many religions making the very same claims. How do you know which one to follow? You can say it feels right or God has shown you the way, but that's nothing any of the other religions couldn't claim. If you don't understand certain concepts; if they are beyond you. How do you know? I think this stuff is better left to "I believe" rather than "I know". For example: I'm an atheist of weak type, I would say "I don't believe there is a God" rather than "I know there is no God"..... Umm... I think you missed the point then..... You don't understand key features of the ideology yet you trust that your right. Being conceited means holding a high opinion of ones self, and that isn't how you come to atheism. You come to atheism looking to understand something, (or atleast that's why I'm in this position) not because you know that which you don't understand. That's not being conceited. It's being honest with yourself. (To be honest, you may have miss used the word altogether. I just felt insulted and threw it back. ) (Which above part?) No. He's only scary when people try to speak on his behalf in understood humanistic terms. You guys try to huminise him and in doing so 99% of all christians completely destroy the intended outlook of God's nature. You will also be interested to know that's why 100% of atheist reject the idea outright in argument. The bible and christians do not do the idea of a God justice! No matter how the concept is stated it would still be a negative. It would be lacking in the ability to be known as truth to all that see it. With that said, there is no reason the idea can't be discussed, but there is a reason the christian God gets mocked by alot of atheist. To date there has been only one God believing person I couldn't argue. My daughters priest. He is the only person of faith I have met that could lay it out as a rational belief on his part. I dissagree with him, but he only offered a personal belief, not a truth. There was no argument to be had..... (As a side note, I've read the bible, more than once might I add...) Yes you do. It is not a free gift, if it were, everyone would go to heaven regardless of belief and/or behavior. You have to do something in order to obtain entrance to heaven, being faithful and moral is part of that something! It's just a word, and this situation fits that word. Not really a big deal. I don't understand your view on faith? Faith is your own or it would be something we all have. Don't go..... It's boring if only atheist are in the religion section. Besides, the martial arts sections are dangerous.... I mean, it's full of angry heathens and pagans and what not.
From a non-Xtian point of view, hell is irrelevant. We don believe in it, why should it scare us. It's a Xtian concept invented to keep little Xtian children in line.
