The Bible's Greatest Contradiction

This doesn't seem fair, and besides God chatted to Mohammed did he not?

 

According to the bible, wasn't the church founded by Jesus? Didn't he appoint Saint Peter as his successor? "You are the rock on which I shall found my church" (or something along those lines.)

 

That's an easy one to answer. God didn't write the Bible.. people did. People who have an imperfect understanding of the devine. And even if the Bible were devinely impsired, which in part I do believe, it is still filtered through people. If the same text were written today, it would be written with today's understanding of the world. Two thousand years from now, people would be sitting around saying, oh its wrong because now we know how cells were formed and we can do it in the lab, therefore there is no God. Its not a logical arguement when you really look at it.

 

well you see this would make sense, its a shame that people are so keen to preserve the literal intent rather than to look for the meaning beneath the context.

 

By church he meant people who believed in him, not necessarily an organisation.

 

So that is your interpretation of what he meant?

 

Sort of.
I think that's what church originally meant and then the use of the word gradually evolved to describe the organisations. So a church is technically the people of a faith rather than it's leaders and buildings.

But yes, like every other meaning I have with words it is an interpretation.

 

The Bible says your body is a temple. Even Christ stated this "Destroy THIS temple and in 3 days I will build it up" The Jews thought he meant the synagogue which took several years to build, but He was speaking of His body.

The people of a faith, and the bulding itself is a church.

 

If you have to believe before the evidence becomes apparent then it defeats the point of the evidence.

It's Catch-22. I will not believe in something without any reason to do so, yet i cannot get this 'reason' untill i believe.

What sort of belief system requires you to believe before having reason to so. (that in itself says a lot). Prehaps one where there is no evidence to cause you to believe because if there was, thats the way it would be.

 

Multiple replies

Actually, if you read it more carefully, Christ asks Peter "But whom say ye that I am?" th which he replies "Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God." and Christ says "That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. " The Catholic church claims that Christ meant that Peter was to be the foundation (rock) of the church, (Peter in Greek is Petros = stone but Christ and Peter didn't speak Greek!) but Christ was refering to Peter's reply "Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God." That is the foundation of the Christian religion. The proof of this is elsewhere in the Bible where Christ is refered to as the "Chief cornerstone" which is what they called the foundation. Incidentally, that interpretation is the justification for the Pope since they claim that Peter was the first Pope.

Absolutely correct.

Not really. If you were a fabulously rich bachelor looking for a wife, would you want to marry a woman without first knowing if she really loved you versus loving your wealth? This is not a direct simile but the sentiment is similar. God wants us to love Him without having to prove it. Once we show Him we love him, he rewards us. Those rewards are a good part of the evidence.

First, there are reasons to do so but they may have never been presented to you (I would do so now but I would be proselytizing and I would probably create undo stress to many members and be flamed unmercifully). Second, we do it all the time! Have you ever quit one job to take another. We quit the one because we have faith in the new employer to live up to his word. We date people in the hopes of getting something in return (whether that be love, sex, or just a good time). etc.

Ummm... Which ones do NOT? I guess that depends on what you call a good reason!

 

w00t

^yep.

Though He shows us He loves us before we love Him as well, through things we typically don't recognize.

 

Can someone please give me an example of Love that they have received from God ? I fail to understand this.

(not mocking. serious post)

 

If we are talking about Christianity. Errrmmm. Jesus Christ dying for us? That's an example of love that affects us today. That and a good, sure feeling of where you're heading in life ( which from after talking to a lot of people I'm around, is sort of rare ) is an example of love to me also. And little thing along the path here and there.

 

My life is an example of it.

I was not born into a Christian family. In fact, my family remains quit agnostic except my sister who is a pantheist! Before I knew Christ, I led a hard life, but always managed to find food and shelter, often through the hands of strangers. What I now call God's blessings in my life, were nothing more than conspicuous timely good fortune. I guess as a non-believer, you can write off repeated coincidence as nothing more than that.

After I accepted Christ, my life turned around in greater ways. Some examples. When I needed money (not wanted, NEEDED) I always found it. in fact, at one point when I needed $200 to pay my rent or get tossed out, I got a check from the IRS. Not a regular tax return. I was not expecting it. It was a check with a letter stating that I had made a calculation mistake on my tax return from 2 years before! Ever heard of that happening? It was for $220. I realized that God had provided what I needed, the very day I needed it, and had even given me an extra 10% which I promptly tithed to my church (those of you who don't know about tithe, God expected his people to give 10% of what they earned to be returned which provided for the religeous leaders and the temple. Old Testament stuff that still applies today)

I am now a married man with 3 wonderful children and have never had a need that wasn't supplied since that time.

To those who do not want to believe, my life is just a string of fortunate circumstances and is a testament to my will and self-motivation. But I tell you, I gave control of my life to Christ and God and have never had reason to regret it or even look back.

 

Hand&Foot, thanks for the post.

Sparkle, I was talking about personal unique experiences that people interpretate as love from God.

 

HandandFoot:

Your post is appreciated, and the things you describe I think are really the only reasonable evidence/argument I have ever heard for the existence of God. I can definitely understand the strong implication of divine existence one would feel from such events. However I have one question.

If you can derive God's existence from things consistently "working out" for you, can someone similiarly dirive God's non-existence from things consistently "not working out"?

Whenever I hear an atheist use the argument "My life sucks, therefore God doesn't exist", I tell them that's the one of the worst arguments they could possibly make, I tell them that they cannot conclude that God does not exist from the fact that they have bad luck. I'm sure you'd agree. So what's the difference between that, and concluding that God does exist from good luck?

I think that they intuitively sound different, but logically, I think they are on equal footing, which means either both are good arguments, and thus they are contradictory (rendering them bad arguments), or both are non-sequiturs, which means that neither one says anything about God's existence or non-existence.

What are your thoughts?

 

Also how do you balance that with people who do worship god (who are good people and just as worthy as yourself) for whom bad things happen - and people who do not worship god (including many who are immoral, law-breaking *beeps* who are not worthy of devine assistance at all) for whom life is great.

Both of these cases exist, and are (i would expect) as common as the occurance of a worthy, good worshiper for whom good things happen.

I think this is why people believe it is just a co-incidence.

 

Personally, I always feel God in two places. The awe and wonder I get from studying biology, there is nothing more amazing then watching bacteria just doing what bacteria do when you consider that they are just roving sacs of biochemicals. And the connection that I feel with others. You know how you can feel someone else's emotions or pain? That interconnection leads me towards God and my culture leads me towards Christianity if that makes sense.

 

Tough one indeed! First, I would consider perpective and expectation. I say things worked out for me, but my expectations were that I wouldn't eat or have a place to eat. If you dig into what didn't work out for someone else, would it be "I didn't get the car I wanted" or even "I didn't get a car" That was why I made the distinction between what I needed and not what I wanted. Everyone's experience is different. It was never obvious to me until AFTER I was saved. If I had never been in need of so much, I might never have been ready when I had Christ introduced to me! I could have easily been one of those people. I think I had as much or more reason to believe that my life sucked!
This is where everyone gets upset because it would be unfair to not give everyone an equal chance. They're right, but is it God's fault? I believe not since he distinctly requests of Christ's followers to "spread the good news", so it's really my and my fellow Christian's faults that everyone doesn't get that opportunity. This is, of course, no consolation to those who are miserable but we know that not everyone will accept the invitation.

The difference between the two is obvious. You can't prove the non-existance of anything by the lack of evidence! Of course that does nothing for that persons feelings.The justification of my stance is that evidence can be believed or refused, but it remains evidence none the less. If you accept it, it leads you in one path. If you refuse it, you go in another. Contradictory arguments do not negate each other, they are often just different perspectives of the same experience. Your final conclusion is valid in that there is no physical shareable evidence on God's existance that cannot be refuted by even a modestly creative mind. What I find most interesting is that in an effort to refute God's existance, many people will actually be dishonest even with themselves! It's an interesting phenomenon!

 

Just as you can't prove the existance of something with lack of evidence, which raises the question: why do people conclude something does exist, namely God, when there is no evidence or reason to turn to him.

Yes, technically evidence can be refused or believed, but there needs be evidence in the first place in order for it to be accepted or rejected. How can you believe in evidence which doesn’t exist?

The problem with "god evidence" is that it's usually personal, subjective and often illogical, rendering the "evidence" useless for proving anything. Evidence should be testable by anyone and that is the beauty of scientific evidence.

My point exactly. There is no evidence to prove or disprove God, but there is a lot of reason and evidence not to believe in God. That is not proof he doesn’t exist, just that there is not need to refer to him. Occam's Razor applies here.

I've never heard of this with people to try to refute God, only when people try to prove God (i can give you a list if you like). In fact, who even tries to refute God because science doesn’t? Science doesn’t attempt to disprove God. The reasons not to believe in God are a consequence of science.