God is good and evil

This is just too much. I offer an example designed to be so unrealiable and far fetched that any reasonable person would realize that to accept these accounts as belonging to the same event would be the hieght of gullability and you actually accept it.[Born2Preach]Well, I guess we won't know till we meet Her/Him, eh?[/QS]And until such time he/she/it isn't worth our time. Like your God? You are trully amazing. That is two examples of rediculous situations, one you would accept and the other you reject only because you know I wasn't being serious. I really want to know, how much money do you spend on info commercial products? Why not? That is exactly what they appear to be. They have no reliable supporting evidence, magical beings performing fantastic feats, talking animals, heroic kings. Yup, just what I would expect from fantasy books. The only difference is that people believe these stories.Could I be wrong? Yes, but I would be very surprised. Started out as a Methodist, later joined a 'happy-clappy' church (almost became a youth minister), Pagan, just plain esoteric, and I had beliefs similar to your just before I became an atheist.As far as the evidence goes, there is too much to list here, but the unrealiablity of evidences offered in support of religious believes was significant. The fact that I can, pretty much at will, 'conjur up' a personal message from god, complete with feelings of euphoria and oneness with the universe, didn't help the religious case much either. For more you will have to bring up specific evidence for God.

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Freedom, morality, and the human dignity of the individual consists precisely in
this; that he does good not because he is forced to do so, but because he freely
conceives it, wants it, and loves it.
- Mikhail Bakunin, God and the State, from The Columbian Dictionary of Quotations

To call me guillible to believe all these accounts could possibly link to the same event is absolute fallacy; you ever been to highschool? Highschool rumors are a perfect example of many different stories all based on the same event; I'll give you an example from my junior high I'll never forget:I was exchanging mock punches with a friend when, like it always does, the playing around went from joking to serious, until he punched me in the stomach pretty hard, and then I turned around and clipped him on the ear. Two of our friends grabbed us and pulled us apart before anything else happened, and from this event the following 4 stories(just to name a few) were fabricated:1.Big group fight involving 20 people(roughly 10 on each side), each group siding with either myself or my friend. It went on for about 10 minutes before our 3 security guards tore through the crowd to pull us out and take us to the office.2.A blood and a crypt snuck onto campus and got in a knife fight, and the crypt got his throat slit right in front of several people(I can't believe people actually bought this, but they did!)3.Basically the same story as 1, except drugs and/or weapons were involved.4.Similar to the truth, except instead of us it was two other people that neither of us had heard of, and of course the story said the fight lasted much longer.And that's just to name a few! All of those told completely different stories, each version having about 5 places where the fight alledgedly took place. Yet, when we talked to some people about where they heard this or that from, the stories all originated from the two friends who broke it up or the people sitting at a table not far from where it happened. One person told the next, slowly changing details, and BAM! The retellings created an evolutionary tree for a 3 second scene!So, in summary: Even your example has some chance of being the same event. And there are more similarities between religions than between those stories anyhow. So strangers aren't worth your time? That's very cold of you. Why, thank you Crampy! But you didn't spell truly correctly How can you expect me to take you seriously when you're not being serious? None considering I don't know the credit card number, not that I would anyway unless they're selling a really big gun. Big guns rule. Then we both admit we could be wrong or we could not be wrong. That's good. I'm not ashamed to say it makes me uneasy that the majority of older atheists that I know have said that. Guess I'd be out of a job if that happened, huh? I have serious motivation to stay a believer, though. No belief=no paycheck, or at least no benefit from the seminary classes I'll be taking soon. Euphoria I assume means that warm, fuzzy 'Holy' feeling people get at church etc. I don't see how that would be irrelevant; I don't see the survival benefit in having the ability to produce that feeling so why else can our bodies produce it?

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Wanna feel God? Step onto the wrestling mat and you'd be crazy to deny the uplifting spirit.

Just realized I'd be posting in this thread for over 2 months now. Go me!

Crashfrog replies: Whereupon Crashfrog retorts with I would ask Crashfrog how he can extrapolate what God is doing or not doing in other peoples lives? I realize that for you, Crashfrog, God may well be a non entity and thus inactive in your own life. I really cannot judge the validity or the power of your internal source...be it your own link to human wisdom or be it another source unknown to me.
I will say that God is my source when I get out of the way and let Him shine, and believe me I have proof that satisfies my own question....for were it me, I never could have achieved one tenth of the life and results that I see Him do through me and despite me!!This message has been edited by Phatboy, 08-22-2004 03:25 AM

It's called "chi-square analysis." (I think.) It's a statistical tool you can use to determine if a certain occurance is statistically significant, or merely what we would expect from normal chance.And that's the thing. No matter what people ascribe to God, it turns out, it's exactly the same result, statistically, that we would expect if God didn't exist.If you can't tell the difference between God existing and not existing, what's the point? Either that makes God a pretty lame god, or else he actually doesn't exist. Either way I'm not very impressed - I certainly wasn't as a believer. Well, I'm sure that you do.But there's very real psychological effects that would explain how you would perceive having that "proof" without necessitating the actual existence of God. And that's the question I'm interested in: "does God exist?" Not just, "do people think He does?"Do you see what I'm saying, maybe?

Hmm... this is interesting. So either chance does not exist or God does not exist? Could not God cause some things to operate by chance?Any deviation from chance or natural laws would be evidence to our finite minds of his soverign omnipotent presence. (you do not believe he has done this on occasion, and I do) But maybe there is proof elsewhere. Maybe the proof is in the lives of people. After all, I've been saying that human history is a great power experiment between good/evil arrogance/humility God/Satan human viewpoint/ divine viewpoint.Hmm... I may be on the verge of a breakthrough tying some things together. God is sovereign which means he has complete control over EVERYTHING. So... what appears as chance to our finite minds must be his sovereign choice (if he exists, which I believe he does).HOWEVER, God has chosen to delegate some of his sovereignty to his creations so that they may have free-reign over themselves with limited power.Human free-will is not subject to chance (if it wasn't we might as well roll the dice to see who becomes president, infact we wouldn't even have society for a president), but it is subject to influencing factors (lets keep it simple: good and evil).So if there is no God and chance is the law of the universe, then why not a 50/50 possibility that what I do is right or wrong? Because I have sovereignty borrowed from God called free-will.Why, when we look at history do we see great nations rise and fall morality integrity and objectivity come and go? Why, in my life, have I somewhat succeeded in removing my evil choices and increasing my good choices? Yes, I'm quite sure I used to do mostly bad things and now I'm doing much better than 50/50 good/bad.If chance is the law of the universe, then why is there an ebb and flow of good and evil. Why does it rise and fall apart from chance? Why does it exist at all?Good exists where we, by our own free-will, have accepted His truth.
Evil exists where we, by our own free-will, have rejected His truth.Because our decisions are not subject to chance, but the influence of good and evil, is evidence that a supernatural struggle exists. Perhaps chance exists by God's will so that our will is not influenced by His and/or to provide a distinction between our choice and his and/or to provide a sort of backdrop through which this experiment can be fairly carried out. Of course, since our sovereignty is only borrowed from God he can usurp it if he chooses or influence it directly by acting outside of chance, but to do so totally all the time would defeat the purpose of human history in the first place as the great power experiment.This message has been edited by Hangdawg13, 06-27-2004 03:05 AM

You tell me. In a universe where all outcomes are known to God and nothing is beyond his effortless power, where his very will is instantly manifest, can chance even occur? Could there be any outcomes that God could not forsee? Hardly. They'd simply be evidence that our conception of the physical laws was in error. After all how would we know the difference between a God breaking the rules and a rule we did't fully understand in the first place? You seem to think that there's someplace we can look and see the actual physical laws. Obviously this isn't true - our concepts of the physical laws of the universe will always be approximations, and as a result, we would never be able to know if a certain occurance was "against" the laws of physics, or if we just didn't understand the law in the first place. Again, how could that be? If God knows all and is all-powerful, there's no way he can stop being those things selectively. How do you know that there is, though? You need to back up a step. Before we go talking about good and evil, you need to ask yourself why you believe those things exist. There are several possibilities:1) Good and evil actually exist. (this would be the obvious reason you might think that they do.)2) Good and evil are simply human attempts to make sense out of things that occur by chance.Like you, there are some things that I consider good, and some I consider evil. Though those are such polarizing terms that I prefer "good" and "bad." But never would I make the mistake of assuming that "good" and "bad" are some kind of universal constant. How could they be, given the enormous variety of opinion on what exactly is good and bad?I guess you're content to worship a God you can't distinguish from chance. I just don't understand why, but there's of course no requirement for your beliefs to make sense to me.

Does an all powerful leader become unable to delagate power and yet still retain control? Good point. How do we differentiate between Gods
miraculous deeds and advances in human understanding? Is God as outdated as Ghosts and Goblins? I think not. You may scoff, but mark my words.

Is there a difference between capability and action? If man could fly does that mean he could not walk? Because we can shout, can we not whisper?

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion