Hey, I'm off to watch a movie. You keep trying to figure out how to convert us "non-believers," while g-d and I have a good little laugh at your expense.
man, what a way to live. you can live however you want. shooting the bird at someone counts as much as killing somebody in God's eyes. sin all you want, to any degree you want, and all you have to say is "God, please forgive me". No wonder so many people love God. What a great thing. Who cares how you live your life. no wonder everyone in prison becomes a Christian.
It requires belief, not merely saying it. And if you truly believe it, if you allow it to truly change your heart, then it will follow that you will change your actions. You can't ******** God.
I'm lucky. My god lets me live my own life. I can do as I please. I can choose to believe in what I want. I just live my life kind of how I see it - be kind to others, help out as I should, and don't lose sleep about the rest. I don't think any "just" god would put me here to spend my days stressing out about whether I am pleasing HIS expectations. What is in it for him then, am I just some experiment under his petrie dish? So many people think they are the captain of God's football team, but don't undertand - it's just a scrimmage....put the evidence in the car, junior!
LVII. Oh Thou who didst with Pitfall and with Gin Beset the Road I was to wander in, Thou wilt not with Predestination round Enmesh me, and impute my Fall to Sin? LVIII. Oh Thou, who Man of baser Earth didst make, And who with Eden didst devise the Snake; For all the Sin wherewith the Face of Man Is blacken'd, Man's Forgiveness give--and take!
LHG 1)You're focusing too much on sin, in my opinion, and not enough on salvation. 2)My statement of God not being just is clearly superceded by my statement that "God is more than fair." God is "not fair" only in the sense that absolute fairness on His part would deny all of us the chance at redemption. 3)"I don't believe in an unjust God meting out his wrath in an arbitrary fashion because of our sins." -- Well, ok. I'm not sure we're in a position to dictate terms to God regarding what is just or unjust. You're assuming you know better than Him what the proper course of action would be. If God does exist, and I believe He does, then I'll go out on a limb and trust that He knows better than LHG how things should be handled. Are you willing to say that you know better than God? 4)I don't know if you believe in free will. I do. I don't see how we can have free will and at the same time a world where everyone gets equal opportunity to know God. This necessarily means that we're free to influence and be influenced by other people. Some use that influence for bad, some for good. 5)It seems to me that your approach to this topic is grounded in a Civil Rights mentality. Civil Rights era terminology such as "equal opportunity", "civil disobedience" say as much. I'm guessing you see it as an analogy ---> Government:Minorities::God:Gentiles --. So the Great Authority (Govt/God) has long been holding out against the Great Unfortunate (minorities/children of Moscow). I would suggest that such an analogy is terribly misleading, and that indulging it further is dangerous to your spiritual health. God is not Government. The separation of the realm of spiritual authority from that of governmental authority is emphasized at several points in the Bible. "Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's; and unto God the things that are God's." (Mt 22:21) 6)So what about those who have never heard of God or Christ, what about those who lived before the advent of Christ? Who never even would have known that he lived? Paul, in Romans, offers a hint:
Go, you're hopeless. Please lose the obsession with forcing everyone into a binary decision on Creationism v Evolution.
a child is born and raised in remote tibet and is raised as a buddhist. then he lives there his whole life there, raises a good family, all practicing buddhists and then dies of old age surrounded by loving friends and family, it is a shame that he must now burn in everlasting hell because he didnt become christian.. and to think if he only had a television he could have turned on bob tilton and his soul would have been saved...this story makes me sad...
Don't be sad for the monk. Personally, rather than to be forced to watch Bob Tilton for thirty minutes a day, I'd rather burn in hell for eternity. Unlike Coelacanth, I'm probably not Bob's biggest fan.
For those who missed it: "6)So what about those who have never heard of God or Christ, what about those who lived before the advent of Christ? Who never even would have known that he lived? Paul, in Romans, offers a hint: For when the Gentiles, which have not the law, do by nature the things contained in the law, these, having not the law, are a law unto themselves (Romans 2:14) -------------------------------------------------------------------- In other words, "the Law" (Paul is referring to the 10 commandments) was not merely a Jewish invention, nor was it merely the gift of God to the Jews. True, it was personally given by God to the Jewish people, but its moral demands were no different than those of every conscience of every race. The Jews had the advantage in terms of getting a "thus saith the Lord" attached to those things which we non-Jews know only instinctively. More from Paul: for the Law brings about wrath, but where there is no law, neither is there violation. (Romans 4:15) --------------------------------------------------------------------- And also... for until the Law sin was in the world; but sin is not imputed when there is no law. (Romans 5:13) -------------------------------------------------------------------- And last, from Jesus Himself: "And that slave who knew his master's will and did not get ready or act in accord with his will, shall receive many lashes, but the one who did not know it, and committed deeds worthy of a flogging, will receive but few. And from everyone who has been given much shall much be required; and to whom they entrusted much, of him they will ask all the more. (Luke 12:47-48) -------------------------------------------------------------
2 possibilites here: Either I'm not smart enough to follow your argument, or your argument is disjointed and random.
Coelacanth: If you choose to posit a lack of intelligence as the reason that you did not understand my paragraph that you quoted, that is your affair. The fact is, you did not understand it. Personally, I believe the reason you didn't understand it is that your blind allegiance to your religious beliefs precludes your understanding of anything that seriously challenges those beliefs... but, who knows, you may be right. When I say, "The existence of free will in a world in which everyone has roughly the same experiences about God is not a logical contradiction" I mean that it is not a logical contradiction to imagine a world in which the belief that the Christian God exists is roughly as prevalent in Moscow and in every other location on earth as it is in Dallas AND for free will to exist in that world, also; or to imagine a world in which everyone has approximately the same intelligence and similar abilities to reason AND for free will to exist, also; or to imagine a world in which IF one's parents are atheist college professors that one would have other experiences in life that compensate for the influence a parent's beliefs about religion has on the parent's child, and for some form of free will to exist, nonetheless. The point here is, Coelacanth, that either an omnipotent God can create a world in any manner he desires that is not logically contradictory or else He is not omnipotent. If any of those worlds involve a logical contradiction that I've overlooked, please point it out. The fact is that the world in which we do live is nothing at all like any of those others. In this world it is entirely possible to live in a city in which the prevalent view is that the Christian God does not exist or for one to be incapable of reason or to have one's parents and peers' atheistic views strongly influence one's own views about the existence God and, at the same time, to have no other experiences that fully, or even greatly, compensate for that influence. Why should we live in this world as opposed to one of the former IF God desires that everyone should believe that He exists?
