Exactly Why Don't You Believe In the God of the Bible?

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Christ is the Sabbath. We rest in Him.

???? Who made that up? The guys down at Wal-Mart so Christians don't feel guilty about shopping on Sunday anymore? Resting in Christ as the Sabbath sounds like no rest to me.

As for the looking inward and failing and then supposedly turning to God, the thinking process is the same, you've just given a different name and personality, a safer one, to your inner voice. You've dampened down your selfish side by replacing it with a more open, mature one, but you could accomplish the same thing by calling that new 'voice ' Louie or Stella or anything else. The term you use, God, has more weight for you, more meaning, but that is something you have applied to it rather than the reverse. You are still looking inward, which is after all where the answers to our true selves lie, you are just imagining that it is a power outside of yourself.

It is not. It is you.
Imagination can take a person a long way, but not all the way.

Joe(Sometimes God likes to be called Skip)Nation

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Momma- I agree with Joe. I really applaud you for turning your life around. I am sure that it was not easy. But I believe that it was YOU who made the difference.

If you want to believe that God was the one that changed your life, I am certainly not going to argue the point with you. The fact remains that you ARE changed, for the better, and that is wonderful.

Just as an intellectual exercise though, let's speculate as to what would happen if it were proven unequivocally, that God does not exist. Would you go back to your former life, or would you continue with the way that you are living now?

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Phoenix32890 wrote:

Momma- I agree with Joe. I really applaud you for turning your life around. I am sure that it was not easy. But I believe that it was YOU who made the difference.

If you want to believe that God was the one that changed your life, I am certainly not going to argue the point with you. The fact remains that you ARE changed, for the better, and that is wonderful.

Just as an intellectual exercise though, let's speculate as to what would happen if it were proven unequivocally, that God does not exist. Would you go back to your former life, or would you continue with the way that you are living now?

Phoenix,

That is a difficult question to answer because I believe there is no possibility of finding out that there is no God. However, if it were to happen, I would hope that I wouldn't be angry and bitter. If I became angry and bitter, I would probably revert right back to what I was. It would be a devastating blow to me. I would lose all hope. As I stated before, when I lean to my own understanding, I more often than not, choose the wrong thing.

Joe Nation,

The Sabbath was made for man. Man was not made for the Sabbath. We are to follow Christ daily, not just on one particular day picked out.

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But what does that mean: "Christ is the Sabbath; we rest IN him"? That sounds as deeply symbolic as the Catholics' eating of His flesh and drinking of His blood. I don't mind symbolisms--indeed, that's the only way I'll consider religion--but one cannot claim to be a literalist fundamentalist and indulge in such murky symbollisms.

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JLNobody,

That's a good question. We rest in Him. I place my cares, desires, wants and worries upon Him and He takes care of them.

Yes, it may be symbolic but it is the way I see it. I do not refer to my faith as a religion. Religion is what man has done with God's word.

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Hmmm, that's progress.

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spendius wrote:

soz wrote-

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OK, then I heartily disagree. Or, I heartily agree if you substitute "species" for culture -- it's a universal human phenomenon. Every culture has its creation myths, its search for causes.

Not really soz.Not like us.No other culture had infinity dynamics or even perspective.Compare a Rembrandt with any other depiction of a human figure.A mosque with a thrusting into infinite space of a cathedral spire. Chinese garden construction with Capabilty Brown.

We are on our own onwards and upwards.It's how the USA got made.

Wow, I've seen some bigotry in my time but this is gotta be up there in my top ten.

Setanta & Sozobe, thanks for the kind words on the analogy.

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I don't believe in God. I also don't believe in the nonexistence of god.

The chances of anything being true in the realm of the supernatural is vanishingly small.

And not to recognize that those are the chances is foolish. As foolish to believe that the roulette wheel WILL land on 34, that is.

Maybe everything you believe in is God, nothing else will do. But know this: does faith ever corrolate with reality?

If you choose to believe that the roulette wheel WILL land on a certain number, how often does it come out to be true?

And did faith ever contribute to mankind's progress of knowledge?

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Since I am part of mankind and my faith has contributed to progress of knowledge in my life, I'd answer yes.

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Since I am part of mankind and my faith has contributed to progress of knowledge in my life, I'd answer yes.

I mean the progress of knowledge that is your faith. Does faith have correlation with truth? Do you know what truth is?

We believe things because we want them to be true, not because we would like for them to be true.

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Yes, I know what truth is. I even know what faith is. C'mon, give me a little credit, will ya?

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So, does faith=truth?
Nope

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You can only arrive at 'truth' through valid epistomological methodology.
Faith is not a form of epistomology.
Therefore, you cannot extract 'truth' from 'faith'

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Therefore, you cannot extract 'truth' from 'faith'

That's what I'm trying to say all along.

For those who believe that "faith" is enough, well, it's not. Not for truth. And it would be foolish enough to believe that it does connect to truth.

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aktorist wrote:

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Since I am part of mankind and my faith has contributed to progress of knowledge in my life, I'd answer yes.

I mean the progress of knowledge that is your faith. Does faith have correlation with truth? Do you know what truth is?

We believe things because we want them to be true, not because we would like for them to be true.

Read your last sentence again. "We believe because we want" "not because we would like"

If we want something to be true or we would like something to be true... they are the same thing.

Where do YOU find truth? Where does anyone find truth?

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Maybe you misunderstood.

"I would want them to be true" is different from "I would like for it to be true" while I was referring to it. Maybe I wan't too clear on that, and that's my fault.

"I would want them to be true" refers to that I make a statement because I believe that it is true.

"I would like for it to be true" means that it would benefit me to believe in such a thing.

"There is a chair there" is different from "it is useful to believe that there is a chair there," for example.

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Where do YOU find truth? Where does anyone find truth?

We can't find truth but we have to leave questions open. We can't just accept something on faith. But we can have evidence.

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"Where does anyone find truth?"

What is truth? Define it and I'll tell you where to look for it.

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Only by faithfully reading and following the morning horoscope can we delve deep enough into the mystery of life to function as God intended us to.

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According to the philosopher, Nietzsche, truth is the expression of a history of errors. I defline truth as a proposition about Reality that we treat, if it passes muster with respect to our epistemological standards, as "truth"--but only provisionally. Eventually it, too, will take its place among the errors preceding future truths.

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Exactly Why Don't You Believe In the God of the Bible?

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