666...the Devils Moving Average
- Thread starter crackhead
- Start date
Yes, but today I asked Axe if the origin of the universe and first life looked as one would expect it if there was in fact a God. And he more or less said yes (I think).
Now he's asking: if God is loving, all-powerful, etc., then why is there so much suffering especially among "innocents"? He's basically saying on the surface of it, doesn't it look like there is not an all-loving, all-powerful God since innocent people suffer?
If I understand you, you're essentially answering the last question "No, because that's part of the design. It appears flawed, but it isn't - it's all part of the design".
I basically agree with you, but that will not be a satisfactory answer to someone who does not believe in God. He is asking, "How can that possibly be justified?" And that is a very tough question.
Earth can be a very harsh place and I think sometimes you just have to say that's an area where you "believe" - where you believe that God will make it all right in the end and that somehow it serves a higher purpose or design...
If someone asks "How can that be justified?" I could give them a very reasonable explanation, but would they believe it?
You can never satisfy the intellect of someone concerning God, it is not possible. God is not known through the intellect or senses any more than sound is known through the sense of touch, or taste through the sense of sight.
To know anything from someone who has higher knowledge, there has to be a willingness to trust in the teacher. To learn from God, who knows everything, one has to be willing to surrender to Him, surrender their mind, their will, and their vanity without reservation. It is a decision of whether or not to trust the intellect or to trust the heart.
In nearly every religion, it is the same......as God or His Saints have said, "Trust in God and all will be revealed in time if you have faith."
Why should someone trust then? Because they want what God can give them.
Even the non-believers have concepts of love, happiness, life, joy, etc.
The non-believers also have concepts of perfection and unlimited.
The concept of God I work from is that His personality is perfect love, perfect happiness, perfect joy, and eternal life. That is God's nature and personality, that is what He can give me, He can give only what He is.....but I have to be open to receive it.
For some strange reason though, they think that they should be able to have proof of the unlimited on the basis of their limited minds, limited senses, limited reasoning power, etc. of God who is unlimited bliss, unlimited love, perfect peace, and everlasting happiness....and that God "should" be able to appear before them and provide material proof of His Divine existence. Everything the intellect can know is limited and exists in duality, but God is unlimited and exists in complete unity. The exact opposite of this world is God's world.
Faith is the only way to know God, as faith is the human faculty that allows the heart to overcome the intellect's never ending doubts and unwillingness to surrender and trust. A child can never know an adult completely, they will never truly understand as they lack the experiences of an adult. Yet a child can fully and completely love and trust an adult, in fact trust and faith in the adult is the process in which children grow and learn.
Imagine if a child distrusted the parent from day 1. There would be no progress or growth. The child is dependent on the adult, and out of survival has to trust the adult. In the same way, an aspirant has to approach God with the trust and dependency of a child in order to know Him. However, the willingness to admit that natural dependency on God requires a humble heart, not a vain intellect.
I have met many ex-believers, and nearly are all sure faith failed them. They smugly claim that they had perfect faith, yet God let them down. The believe they are not to blame in the failure of faith.
A few of the honest ones will admit the possibility that they failed the practice of faith, that in their darkest hour of doubt they made a choice to no longer practice faith, but rather made a choice to abandon faith in favor of their own limited intellect, fear, and ego and accompanying doubt. They are still open enough to tell the truth, while the others are like spurned lovers who will never truly love and trust again.
Their hearts are hardened, and there is nothing you can do about it. If God can't open up their hearts to His love, what on earth do you think you could do about it?
i hear ya, axe. what a dumb thing for him to say here. he believes in a equivalent of the tooth fairy, we don't, and he has the nerve to say you run from the TRUTH?! lol
get a clue, man. :-/
I hate to belabor the design flaw points but here goes.
If you notice most if not all of these "flawed" mutations end up with an offspring that dies without reproducing. In other words that family line stops deadend there. I cited a study in large vertebrates over 80 plus years and tens of thousands of matings and births starting with 64 lines and having 63 of those lines end in deadend "flawed" mutations. One of the mutations was a complete loss of testes in the 7th or 8th generation. Guess what that line ended there. This does nothing at all positive for the fossil record pointing toward evolution because to evolve the mutation must survive and reproduce the mutation to progress to the next higher order. To a believing theist like me this validates the Bibles warnings against matings of closely related siblings which is the only known natural way to concentrate the genes enough to produce changes in the characteristics of the species.
If you notice most if not all of these "flawed" mutations end up with an offspring that dies without reproducing. In other words that family line stops deadend there. I cited a study in large vertebrates over 80 plus years and tens of thousands of matings and births starting with 64 lines and having 63 of those lines end in deadend "flawed" mutations. One of the mutations was a complete loss of testes in the 7th or 8th generation. Guess what that line ended there. This does nothing at all positive for the fossil record pointing toward evolution because to evolve the mutation must survive and reproduce the mutation to progress to the next higher order. To a believing theist like me this validates the Bibles warnings against matings of closely related siblings which is the only known natural way to concentrate the genes enough to produce changes in the characteristics of the species.
we have a new ET record.....without a doubt , the single most successful posting debut....1st post and we are on the 178th page and counting.....Congratulations Crackhead....must be a lot of pressure for your follow up post...kind of like Meatloaf after Bat out of Hell.......what will be your follow up thread?
We kind of experienced a meltdown yesterday, but Iâll get the ball rolling again. Iâm back to the âGenesis versus Astronomyâ topic. I contended back on p. 19 that Genesis 1 matched astronomy exactly. Stu and Axe objected of course. Stu especially had several objections and Iâll go through them one by one:
1. Stu claimed that the earth had little water until much later in earthâs history, i.e. that water came from volcanic outsourcing, etc. This, it turns out, is completely false and what I had to research in more detail. Water is extremely abundant, even as the planets are coalescing and there is lots of water throughout our solar system.
I found a secular link that documents this perfectly which Iâve placed below. This link is from space.com no less, which is a great site!
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/planetearth/early_earth_010110.html
This link documents how abundant water existed from at least 3.8 billion and now scientists think all the way back to 4.4 billion years!
1. Stu claimed that the earth had little water until much later in earthâs history, i.e. that water came from volcanic outsourcing, etc. This, it turns out, is completely false and what I had to research in more detail. Water is extremely abundant, even as the planets are coalescing and there is lots of water throughout our solar system.
I found a secular link that documents this perfectly which Iâve placed below. This link is from space.com no less, which is a great site!
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/planetearth/early_earth_010110.html
This link documents how abundant water existed from at least 3.8 billion and now scientists think all the way back to 4.4 billion years!
Stu also proposed the idea that the earth was not opaque (i.e. letting no light through to the surface). This I knew was false as it flies in the face of all current planetary formation theory. We should have an atmosphere at least as think as Venusâ which is very much opaque. But again, in the link below you can read about earth in its early history had an atmosphere as thick as Venus.
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/planetearth/early_earth_010110.html
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/planetearth/early_earth_010110.html