How to know the true God

The true God challenges the false gods in Isaiah 41:21-24. 43:9, 44:7-8; 45:21, 46:10, 48:3-8. The true God knows what will happen in the future whereas the false gods does not know. You may use the Good News Bible to know what the above verses from Isaiah say if the King James Version is hard.

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@Leadfoot,

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Of course it does. But he had not left yet.

You're deliberately missing the point. When someone makes appearances for forty days after they've been killed, that is an interference in the free will choice of the people he had shown himself to.

And whether or not the events that defied physical law--and interfered with peoples' free will--occurred before or after the death of Jesus, the fact remains that there was an interference in the free will choices of those people.

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@cicerone imposter,

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There's also "thou shalt not kill." Maybe, the world flood was symbolic only.

That would be a more logical choice if one is looking for a contradiction (free will is never explicitly spelled out) but a more accurate translation of the Hebrew text is 'thou shalt not murder'.

But yes, undoing ones own creation would be another privilege of the creator.

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@Glennn,

Quote:

You're deliberately missing the point. When someone makes appearances for forty days after they've been killed, that is an interference in the free will choice of the people he had shown himself to.

I'll give you credit for not resorting to the usual reason.
This is an odd reversal on most atheist's objection to belief. They mostly complain of 'no proof'.

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@Leadfoot,

I'd like to give you credit for making a counterpoint, but alas.

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@Glennn,

Been there, done that. Nothing to be done about different ideas on priority though.

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@Leadfoot,

Clarify that last post. What point were you trying to make?

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@Glennn,

I'm saying you see free will trumping God's main objective and I see it the other way around. In endeavors as vast as this, Exceptions to the rule are always a factor, even for God.

Doesn't mean free will isn't important to God or me though.

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@Leadfoot,

Quote:

I'm saying you see free will trumping God's main objective and I see it the other way around. In endeavors as vast as this, Exceptions to the rule are always a factor, even for God.

Doesn't mean free will isn't important to God or me though.

You do not know the god's main objective; you only presume to know it in order to reconcile the contradictions inherent in your beliefs concerning free will. You are also projecting your idea of what constitutes vastness onto the god's idea of what constitutes vastness. You have given in to the temptation of your ego to place even the god in a box.

Why do you suppose others who have participated in this thread understand that the lack of the god's interference is essential to our free will?

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@Glennn,

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You do not know the god's main objective; you only presume to know it in order to reconcile the contradictions inherent in your beliefs. You are also projecting your idea of what constitutes vastness onto the god's idea of what constitutes vastness.

Nothing wrong with saying so but This implies that you know God better than I do. I've been pretty open about my own thoughts about God, his purpose, how he approaches accomplishing it, etc. Anyone would have a better chance at seeing if you know him better if you did the same. I'd like to hear your take on it.

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Why do you suppose others who have participated in this thread understand that the lack of the god's interference is essential to our free will?

Only guessing here but in most cases it is to reassure themselves that they have made the right choice about God. The most common way to do that is to focus on the lack of hard evidence for his existence and choose to believe he doesn't.

If for some reason one still can't shake the feeling that he might exist, the next best strategy is to rationalize that God is not worthy of being loved and followed. This requires that you choose some aspect of God that you can show is inconsistent or in conflict with your own non negotiable principles.

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@Leadfoot,

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This implies that you know God better than I do.

False. I am not the one arbitrarily assigning attributes to the god. Nor am I the one who claims that the god gave us free will, and who then defends the god's acts of interference in that free will. You are the one who has done these things. I have not claimed to know the god's objective, or attempted to equate my idea of vastness with the god's idea or concept of vastness. You did that.

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If for some reason one still can't shake the feeling that he might exist, the next best strategy is to rationalize that God is not worthy of being loved and followed. This requires that you choose some aspect of God that you can show is inconsistent or in conflict with your own non negotiable principles.

Actually, I was thinking that those who rationalize that the god exists and is worthy of love and worship choose to ignore aspects of the god that show inconsistencies in its nature. Your strategy appears to be to overlook that which will cause you to doubt the reality of the concept you've chosen to invest your belief in for all this time. When it is shown to you that the noninterference which is essential to free will has been violated by the god, you come up with whatever is necessary to explain it away, even going so far as to project your own sense of logic onto the mind of the god.

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@Glennn,

I see this phenomenon in my siblings who are christians. They're able to rationalize the inconsistencies of the bible. They're not dummies. My older brother is an attorney, my younger brother is a doctor, and my sister is an RN.
I've seen these inconsistencies early in my childhood, and determined that the religion of the christian god can't be what they claimed.

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@Glennn,

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Leadfoot Quote:
"This implies that you know God better than I do."

False. I am not the one arbitrarily assigning attributes to the god. Nor am I the one who claims that the god gave us free will, and who then defends the god's acts of interference in that free will. You are the one who has done these things. I have not claimed to know the god's objective, or attempted to equate my idea of vastness with the god's idea or concept of vastness. You did that.

Then where do you get the justification for telling me I don't know various things about God? How do you know my claims are arbitrary unless you know better? I make my claims based on going directly to God. To assert that I am wrong about them implies you know better but It sounds like you are saying you have no information on the subject.

Unless you can give some other rationale for refuting my claims, the only thing you can fall back on is to claim I am lying or delusional. That's fine if you choose to do that but then you have no basis for authoritatively entering into such esoteric discussions like 'does God give us free will' and 'what does that mean'.

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Actually, I was thinking that those who rationalize that the god exists and is worthy of love and worship choose to ignore aspects of the god that show inconsistencies in its nature. Your strategy appears to be to overlook that which will cause you to doubt the reality of the concept you've chosen to invest your belief in for all this time. When it is shown to you that the noninterference which is essential to free will has been violated by the god, you come up with whatever is necessary to explain it away, even going so far as to project your own sense of logic onto the mind of the god.

I have not ignored any aspect of God you bring up and offered my reasoning as to why there are no inconsistencies in the examples discussed. As far as 'projecting my own sense of logic onto the mind of God' , that would be consistent with being created in his image. I see nothing wrong or contradictory about that.

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@Leadfoot,

Here's a list of over 700 inconsistencies in the bible. Please explain them.
http://www.cs.umd.edu/~mvz/bible/bible-inconsistencies.pdf

Here's the first one:

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God creates light and separates light from darkness, and day from night, on the first day. Yet he didn't make the light producing objects (the sun and the stars) until the fourth day (1:14-19). 1:3-5

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@cicerone imposter,

Go fetch this bone Rover!

If you don't care enough to pick one you personally care about and bring it up, I ain't interested.

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@cicerone imposter,

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Here's the first one:
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God creates light and separates light from darkness, and day from night, on the first day. Yet he didn't make the light producing objects (the sun and the stars) until the fourth day (1:14-19). 1:3-5

I see you edited after posting and added this. It is repetitive as I addressed it earlier. If you really care about it, tell me your objections to my explanations and I'll address them.

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@Leadfoot,

No rationalization needed if one understand simple concepts. God creates light on the first day, then creates the light producing objects, the sun and stars, on the fourth day. If you have any understanding of LOGIC, it's self-explanatory.

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@cicerone imposter,

Here's another one. One must believe in the 'savior' to be saved. How about all those who lived before that time? Rationalize that one for us.

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@cicerone imposter,

Read John 5: 28,29.
That covers all, regardless of when/where they were born.

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@cicerone imposter,

Except that it makes sense from the point of view of a proposed earthly observer and considering atmospheric conditions that no doubt obscured light.

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