To want to make myself believe in god? PART 2

[headinhands]

Hello.

"Does madhair think god is behind each storm and volcano etc?"

Of course not and it demeans you to mock madhair who never mocked your non-beliefs.

I'm not mocking. I'm using the question to highlight that things previously attributed to god are now understood to be not the case. And that she happily acknowledges scientific research.

Then why are you even asking whether she believes that God is behind every storm, when I suspect you know the answer very well.

You obviously take pleasure in goading because you believe you have superior wisdom to foolish believers, but it just shows how weak your arguments are that you attributed words to atrcts over the bear attack and now ask whether madhair believes that storms are caused by God.

If you want to debate religion and th eexistence of God, then debate the issues rather than goading and focusing on trivialities that you know to be untrue.

Then why are you even asking whether she believes that God is behind every storm, when I suspect you know the answer very well.

I asked a question that you would already know the answer to because it's a common style of discussing and reasoning over an issue with people.

Remember this morning when I said 'would you threaten to starve your husband' and the replier said 'don't be ridiculous' I then asked something like 'why would that be ridiculous, why wouldn't you threaten to starve him' by way of highlighting what I see as a flaw in the reasoning. (I reasoned that the replier would say/think something like 'it would be abusive' and thereby understand my abhorrence of that passage)

And same with this issue. It was suggested that madhair would see god everywhere and I used that question to highlight that no, she/he probably has no problem not seeing him in things that were previously seen as directs act of god. I honestly don't mean to sound goady.

That said, let me take this opportunity to invite you, or anyone to mock my non-belief. If I find that I can't defend my position I will have learnt something useful.

No one wants to mock anyone's beliefs. None of us know the answers, we are all searching and all believe different things.

you attributed words to atrcts over the bear attack

Yeah, I clearly didn't read her/his post properly as the topic was moving quickly but once she pointed it out to me I apologised.

No but sometimes we learn something valuable if we find we have no defence for our position.

Although it's probably a little less painful to learn it through reasoning :)

You have been focusing on the literal words in the Old Testament, which was written by men, and have used some of those words to try to prove that God does not exist. But God is not words, spirit is not stories about bears, religious feeling is much more than what was written in a book thousands of years ago.

Mystics and metaphysicists use feeling and thought and philoophy to contemplate the nature of reality and God and huge questions such as truth, justice, evil, good, ethics and the creation of the universe.

Just because they don't use science does not mean that they cannot perceive the truth, because the truth of the spirit is beyond science and lies in the realm of thought and philosophy.

You have been focusing on the literal words in the Old Testament, which was written by men

I still genuinely don't understand how a Christian refutes the OT for the reason I gave earlier, i.e. Jesus referring back to it so much. Why would he refer back to a text that was man made and portrayed such a horrible deity?

The references by Jesus are in the 4 canonical gospels. But there are many more gospels and the Essenes' Dead Sea Scrolls and the Gnostic Nag Hammadi were found a few decades ago. There were many Christian sects which lost out in the battle for what become orthodox Christianity under the Emperor Constantine in Byzantium.

The Arians were one huge sect of Christians who were not Trinitarian and which lost out, and they were not Gnostics either, and many of the Germanic tribes were Arian Christians and Emperor Charlemagne himself was an Arian Christian.

So Christianity has had many strands with varying beliefs and there were also varying gospels and understandings.

Politics and power and Emperors all played a role in what became Orthodox Christianity. But none of that negates the existence of God, because even the Emperor Constantine did not have a full understanding of God.

Does Jesus in the other gospels refer back to the OT at all?

I don't know. I know that the Gnostics don't believe that the god of the Old Testament is the real God, and that some of the Gnostics believe that he is in fact the evil Demiurge, so I will have to read the Gnostic Gospels to find out how they came to that conclusion, based on the sayings of Jesus. Presumably there must be differences between what their gospels say and what the canonical gospels say. But I don't know what the differences are yet. But as usual, I will possibly never find time to find out, because I will be doing something else instead.

I believe in God. I have done since my teens. I didn't make myself believe anything ... faith just came, and has stuck with my ever since, and I'm generally found in a church on Sunday morning.

I've spent many hours studying the various arguments for and against, but that was more to do (earlier on) with defending myself and (latterly) for interest's sake. None of them have anything to do with my faith really.

A long-standing family friend accidentally fell off a bar stool some years ago. The head injuries she sustained caused her paranoid delusions, and ultimately she threw herself in front of a train. It happened years ago, but the sheer unfairness of it, both to her and her family makes me want to cry even now. However, it hasn't shaken my faith, it just makes me angry at God. Normally I'm not though.

Hello all,

I came across a book the other day which I've just started reading and it's really good - it's called Unapologetic and it's by Francis Spufford - "Why, despite everything, Christianity can still make surprising emotional sense".

Note the word emotional - he's not trying to 'prove' anything I don't think, but rather to explain.

The blurb on the back says that it's a book for believers who are fed up with being partonised and also - here's the good bit - for non-believers curious about how faith can possibly work in the 21st Century.

I remembered this thread and found it, because I think that this book could really help some people. I'm a Christian and it's helped me clarify my thoughts, and I'm only on Chapter 1!

Does Jesus in the other gospels refer back to the OT at all?_ _
__
Yes.

Each scientific answer just opens up more questions though, anx more and more intractible ones. What caused the Big Bang? Science hasn't given us anything more specific than 'And God spake: "Let there be light". And there was light"'. One day it may do, but then there will be further mysteries behind that.

Religion is losing credibility by the day and is being exposed as the sham it is and always has been.

It has been used as a source of knowledge but science has become far more knowledgeable and advanced than any religious knowledge.

It was said to be a good foundation in moral principles but again, humans collectively have bypassed the morality of religions and come up with a better morality than that taught by religion.

Religion had it's time and both abused it and wasted it. Time to bin it like that old broken childhood toy

Zombie thread