God, or not? A Christian Discussion

Day 18
Thank you, @Elsie. That's more than I hope for. If it helps anyone in this way, I will be very very pleased. I have come across many people like this, who believe in God but respect other people's beliefs as well.

I've done a lot of research on it. And I want to share what I've found. Not only are we right in respecting other people's religions and beliefs, I found out that this is deeply Biblical. If God is God to Adam and Eve, and to all the generations before Abraham, and God to the Jews, Christians and Muslims, He is indeed God to everyone.

Jesus came down to save the world. He was adamant in reaching out to the Gentiles. The only people he condemned in the Bible were the priests, the Sadducees and the Pharisees. He condemned all the religious rules. There's a whole chapter in the Bible on this (Matthew 23). The Great Commandment he gave us is simply to "Love God and love one another".

Many people condemn Christianity because we conflate the birth of Jesus Christ with Santa Claus and celebrate Easter as the time Jesus died, mixing pagan festivals with Christian holy days. Meditation is the latest craze. The meditation that was promoted by psychology is based on Hindu and Buddhist practices. The Christian community has rediscovered our Desert Fathers and Christian meditation.

I love it. I love how Christianity is so diverse and flexible. I do not condemn the evangelists even though I think they're extreme. And I don't agree with evangelism in that sense. My church believes that the best way we can "spread the Word" is live our lives as examplarily as we can.

One of the things I love most about Christianity is how we accept criticism and change accordingly. We are not perfect but Jesus never needed us to be. Love God and love one another. He came to make it both clear and simple. Why complicate it?
 

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Mitch86 said:
If Heaven really existed and God took all of us there at death, Heaven would now contain trillions of residents. What kind of place could hold so many human beings?

I prefer to think we are created by a sperm cell merging with an egg cell. At death we simply cease to exist totally.
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The observable universe is about 7 trillion times larger in diameter than Earth and there are over ~10²⁴ (1 septillion) planets in the universe. Why are you worried about the size of heaven? It's way bigger than the observable universe we live in, LOL.
 
VaughanJB said:
Not to mention, neanderthals mingling with modern man. :D
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If believing in the bible verses is valid I don't think they qualify.
  • Eternal Life:
    John 3:16 states that "whoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life." This highlights the promise of eternal life through faith in Jesus.

    • Resurrection and Life:
      In John 11:25-26, Jesus declares, "I am the resurrection and the life. He that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live." This reinforces the idea of eternal life and the hope of resurrection for believers.
    • Works of Faith:
      John 14:12 suggests that believers will also do the works that Jesus performed, and even greater things. This implies that faith in Jesus should lead to a life of service and compassion.
    • Jesus wasn't around then for them to qualify.
    • Then there are these.
      • Population Growth:
        The Population Reference Bureau also notes that population growth was very slow in the early years, with a growth rate of only 0.05% per year between 8000 BCE and 1 CE.
      • Time of Jesus:
        By the time of Jesus, the world population was estimated to be around 300 million.

      • Another 300 million that don't qualify
      After God murdered all humans except Noah & his family which IMO failed big time. Lets guess that since then 95% of the human race has been as bad if not worse. I think that helps to narrow the population out there in space [heaven].
 

Good morning Boon54. I think a lot of threads will come to a natural end when everything has been covered. I'm surprised that you can find something different to write every day, but please carry on as you like. Belief or non belief is a personal thing and maybe best to keep it that way. I was always told that you should never spoil a conversation with talk of football, religion or politics. Unfortunately in Scotland, these things are often related.

A little aside... Harry Ferguson, who developed the modern tractor, gave each of his staff a notebook with the instruction that they were only allowed to use one page a day. His reasoning was that they should be able to identify and only write the important things. One page was more than enough.
 
Boon54 said:
Day 18
Thank you, @Elsie. That's more than I hope for. If it helps anyone in this way, I will be very very pleased. I have come across many people like this, who believe in God but respect other people's beliefs as well.

I've done a lot of research on it. And I want to share what I've found. Not only are we right in respecting other people's religions and beliefs, I found out that this is deeply Biblical. If God is God to Adam and Eve, and to all the generations before Abraham, and God to the Jews, Christians and Muslims, He is indeed God to everyone.

Jesus came down to save the world. He was adamant in reaching out to the Gentiles. The only people he condemned in the Bible were the priests, the Sadducees and the Pharisees. He condemned all the religious rules. There's a whole chapter in the Bible on this (Matthew 23). The Great Commandment he gave us is simply to "Love God and love one another".

Many people condemn Christianity because we conflate the birth of Jesus Christ with Santa Claus and celebrate Easter as the time Jesus died, mixing pagan festivals with Christian holy days. Meditation is the latest craze. The meditation that was promoted by psychology is based on Hindu and Buddhist practices. The Christian community has rediscovered our Desert Fathers and Christian meditation.

I love it. I love how Christianity is so diverse and flexible. I do not condemn the evangelists even though I think they're extreme. And I don't agree with evangelism in that sense. My church believes that the best way we can "spread the Word" is live our lives as examplarily as we can.

One of the things I love most about Christianity is how we accept criticism and change accordingly. We are not perfect but Jesus never needed us to be. Love God and love one another. He came to make it both clear and simple. Why complicate it?
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nice little sermon matey - enjoyed that and of course in essence agree
 
Boon54 said:
The observable universe is about 7 trillion times larger in diameter than Earth and there are over ~10²⁴ (1 septillion) planets in the universe. Why are you worried about the size of heaven? It's way bigger than the observable universe we live in, LOL.
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some researchers have suggested that in a heaven we are all in spirit form probably not needing clothing and large mansions etc - there will of course be the Lords Mansion big enough for spirits to squeeze in ??
 
Day 19
@Capt Lightning brought up a good point. When will this end? He's also right in saying that most threads will come to a natural end. I think we are nearly there. But perhaps not quite yet, 😂.

I want to thank SF for being very patient and respectful. Although many have expressed doubts and given me warnings, no one has been rude. Many of the opinions have been helpful. I've managed to share more of my thoughts here than anywhere else. We haven't all agreed, but we have agreed to disagree.

I want to perhaps end by addressing two questions: why God, and why Jesus. I've argued that God is the principle (logos) behind the universe. More importantly, God is the purpose and meaning within our lives.

Science has revealed that not only is our universe ruled by rather fixed and immutable laws, it's also amazingly complex despite these laws. On the one hand, the rules are simple. For example, Newton’s Laws start by saying that things stay in place whether they are still or moving. Moving things don't slow down or stop unless something stops it. And things do not move unless something moves them. Based on such simple beginnings, we have been able to discover almost everything, from black holes to the Big Bang.

Despite being logical, and mathematics is pure logic, the universe that's presented by science is amazing and beautiful. It's also full of paradox. Light is both a particle and a wave. It acts as if it is something but it is actually not a thing. It exists but it doesn't have the critical property of mass that we attribute to things.

In the same way, our lives are both logical and paradoxical. Almost everything we do has a reason. The reasons are usually simple. We eat because we are hungry. We sleep because we are tired. We are born, we live and we die. Life is, on the one hand, simple. And yet...

Many of us need more. There are growing mental issues amongst our youth. Very successful people are actually also very depressed and some of our most beloved artists, like Robin Williams, commit suicide. We are the smartest animals on the planet but we are lost.

Turning to God in one form or another is the most natural thing to do. Throughout history, evidence of civilisation has included evidence of belief in something supernatural. Today, we are hesitant, even embarrassed, to turn to God. Buddhists pray even though they don't believe in God. The Greeks concluded that God (logos) exists as the conclusion from pursuing a purely logical analysis of life and the universe.

Does it matter which God we turn to? On the one hand, no. It doesn't matter what name you give to God. Thinking of Him as a human father is perhaps the best metaphor we have. But even a child knows that God is not human but a spirit in heaven.

But it does matter if your belief leads you to acts of harm, to yourself or to others. And it has happened many times. In ancient times, many religious rites involve immoral acts, even human sacrifice. Even today, not every religion or philosophy lead us to live better lives or be better people.

One of the good things that has risen over recent times is that we have agreed that there's really no justification for war or evil. For us, that's just logical. That's the way it should be. But it's not that way in many parts of the world. It has not been that way for most of our history.

We are right to blame it on religion. People have used our belief in God for rather nefarious purposes. Even Jesus condemned his religion.

But we are wrong to condemn God. In doing so, we broke our natural link to meaning and purpose in life. We cast ourselves astray and have nothing to hang on to, to look forward to, in times of trouble. We are lost. Death becomes a bottomless black hole into which nothing awaits us. Some of us are not afraid of death. Or so we say. Maybe we may feel rather differently when the time comes.

Viktor Frankl survived the Holocaust because he was able to hang on to hope. He argued that meaning and purpose is essential for happiness and resilience. But why? Life has no obvious meaning. He concluded that as long as the meaning and purpose works for you, that's fine.

But is it? After much searching, I came to the conclusion that my meaning and purpose are not what I make them out to be. I don't have enough control over life. But they can be discovered if I look at my life in a certain way. Believing in God helps me to find this meaning. This is so for many people. It is why we can be led to war and other evils.

So it is important which God you end up with. Regardless of what you call Him, as long as He leads you to peace and love, He's the right God. Fortunately, despite the many evils Christians have done, we are doing our best not to do them anymore. Indeed, the church I go to repent our sins more than we proclaim our faith. We try to live in love rather than self promotion. We try to change ourselves rather than change others. Fortunately, most people we meet today, for example here in SF, are good people, regardless of their faith.
 
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very eloquently put! - we are told and have it in writing that God created man and women and what we forget sometimes is that he did give them free existence to do what they wish - a rash move some would say but why just keep making angels all the time - gets a bit boring heh? but this God would have known surely that things would sometimes go wrong - remember Noah was it and the great flood and the ark - they were looking for that somewhere in the mountains of Turkey heh?

why did he make us "not perfect" the million dollar question - and look at the problems it has brought all over the world - not dissimilar to some of the ones I came across in my own families?? Why couldn't we just all be perfect? you tell me? So we have are great religions with their good points and not so good and we even fight about it - I tremble with guilt as I watch the news each day. People are dying before our eyes and we feel so helpless? I have met some really very very good people in my life and they are convinced that its the only way to be and some of them are of course church based others just with the humanities perhaps?

We were all created free and all have the same basic choices - love one another and all that can involve or hate one another etc. I often see it as a rather simple choice, and for me being able to focus on some institutions of goodness [who sometimes fail! ] it's like having that first glass of sherry after coming in from gardening - relaxing and focusing and at ease with nature too? regards smiley
 
Boon54 said:
@Capt Lightning brought up a good point. When will this end? He's also right in saying that most threads will come to a natural end. I think we are nearly there. But perhaps not quite yet, 😂.

I want to thank SF for being very patient and respectful. Although many have expressed doubts and given me warnings, no one has been rude. Many of the opinions have been helpful. I've managed to share more of my thoughts here than anywhere else. We haven't all agreed, but we have agreed to disagree.

I want to perhaps end by addressing two questions: why God, and why Jesus. I've argued that God is the principle (logos) behind the universe. More importantly, God is the purpose and meaning within our lives.

Science has revealed that not only is our universe ruled by rather fixed and immutable laws, it's also amazingly complex despite these laws. On the one hand, the rules are simple. For example, Newton’s Laws start by saying that things stay in place whether they are still or moving. Moving things don't slow down or stop unless something stops it. And things do not move unless something moves them. Based on such simple beginnings, we have been able to discover almost everything, from black holes to the Big Bang.

Despite being logical, and mathematics is pure logic, the universe that's presented by science is amazing and beautiful. It's also full of paradox. Light is both a particle and a wave. It acts as if it is something but it is actually not a thing. It exists but it doesn't have the critical property of mass that we attribute to things.

In the same way, our lives are both logical and paradoxical. Almost everything we do has a reason. The reasons are usually simple. We eat because we are hungry. We sleep because we are tired. We are born, we live and we die. Life is, on the one hand, simple. And yet...

Many of us need more. There are growing mental issues amongst our youth. Very successful people are actually also very depressed and some of our most beloved artists, like Robin Williams, commit suicide. We are the smartest animals on the planet but we are lost.

Turning to God in one form or another is the most natural thing to do. Throughout history, evidence of civilisation has included evidence of belief in something supernatural. Today, we are hesitant, even embarrassed, to turn to God. Buddhists pray even though they don't believe in God. The Greeks concluded that God (logos) exists as the conclusion from pursuing a purely logical analysis of life and the universe.

Does it matter which God we turn to? On the one hand, no. It doesn't matter what name you give to God. Thinking of Him as a human father is perhaps the best metaphor we have. But even a child knows that God is not human but a spirit in heaven.

But it does matter if your belief leads you to acts of harm, to yourself or to others. And it has happened many times. In ancient times, many religious rites involve immoral acts, even human sacrifice. Even today, not every religion or philosophy lead us to live better lives or be better people.

One of the good things that has risen over recent times is that we have agreed that there's really no justification for war or evil. For us, that's just logical. That's the way it should be. But it's not that way in many parts of the world. It has not been that way for most of our history.

We are right to blame it on religion. People have used our belief in God for rather nefarious purposes. Even Jesus condemned his religion.

But we are wrong to condemn God. In doing so, we broke our natural link to meaning and purpose in life. We cast ourselves astray and have nothing to hang on to, to look forward to, in times of trouble. We are lost. Death becomes a bottomless black hole into which nothing awaits us. Some of us are not afraid of death. Or so we say. Maybe we may feel rather differently when the time comes.

Viktor Frankl survived the Holocaust because he was able to hang on to hope. He argued that meaning and purpose is essential for happiness and resilience. But why? Life has no obvious meaning. He concluded that as long as the meaning and purpose works for you, that's fine.

But is it? After much searching, I came to the conclusion that my meaning and purpose are not what I make them out to be. I don't have enough control over life. But they can be discovered if I look at my life in a certain way. Believing in God helps me to find this meaning. This is so for many people. It is why we can be led to war and other evils.

So it is important which God you end up with. Regardless of what you call Him, as long as He leads you to peace and love, He's the right God. Fortunately, despite the many evils Christians have done, we are doing our best not to do them anymore. Indeed, the church I go to repent our sins more than we proclaim our faith. We try to live in love rather than self promotion. We try to change ourselves rather than change others. Fortunately, most people we meet today, for example here in SF, are good people, regardless of their faith.
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Bless you, Boon54. 🙏
 
Knight said:
If believing in the bible verses is valid I don't think they qualify.
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Well, the Bible isn't very useful when it comes to the evolution of living things. For example, it does nothing to tell us about the precambrian era, and that was the longest running era for planet earth (almost 90% of of the time Earth has been a thing!). And that whole Noah's Ark thing, what can I say. Just no. Yet a lot of people seem to take it literally.

Given my belief that the Earth is something around 4bn years of age, you can likely imagine many of the issues I have with the good book.

Mind, believing in a God strikes me as being easier than not believing. As an agnostic, you can spend far too much time undoing the theories/beliefs of others, you know?
 
Day 20
@smiley shared two interesting points - God gave us free will, and he created us imperfect.

Perhaps I can address the second point first. Are we imperfect? I read about an interesting exercise to help people who feel inadequate. Go into the garden and pick up something from nature. Contemplate it and think about why it's part of nature. And we see that nothing in nature is wasted. There is a perfect balance in nature in which not only does everything have purpose, they exist in precisely the right amount and do exactly what is needed.

We are able to recognise when we've broken this balance. We can see the harm we do. We also see needless suffering, harm that we may not have caused. Many writers talk about the beauty of nature and say that it points to God. When we see suffering, I think what we are experiencing is an invitation from God.

Most of us react naturally to suffering and find ways to make things better. In doing so, we are doing for God the very thing that we want God to do. It's an immense privilege. Our consciousness and awareness of right and wrong are gifts that enable us to do what God has done and perhaps are still doing.

When the Bible says that we're created in God's image, it's not just that we look like Him (and I'm not sure that we do), it's more that we are able to do, in a small way, what God does.

And look at the world we've created. It too is "imperfect". There are lots that are bad about it, but there are lots that are good and wonderful too. It's odd that those of us who can see the wonders we create cannot see God, and those of us who see God in the wonders of nature cannot see in ourselves the image of God.

The ancients see God as supernatural and something or someone (or someones) so far removed from us that we can only pray for His blessings. Jesus asks that we call God father and asks further that we carry our crosses with him. He came to do his father's work. When we carry our crosses, we are doing God's work.
 
I was infatuated with being a disciple of Christ. In my twenties I had many versions of the Bible. Read a lot and prayed a lot. I could not accept when tragedy occurred that we excuse God. We say it is God's will. O r his way is above ours.
 
Boon54 said:
Day 20
@smiley shared two interesting points - God gave us free will, and he created us imperfect.

Perhaps I can address the second point first. Are we imperfect? I read about an interesting exercise to help people who feel inadequate. Go into the garden and pick up something from nature. Contemplate it and think about why it's part of nature. And we see that nothing in nature is wasted. There is a perfect balance in nature in which not only does everything have purpose, they exist in precisely the right amount and do exactly what is needed.

We are able to recognise when we've broken this balance. We can see the harm we do. We also see needless suffering, harm that we may not have caused. Many writers talk about the beauty of nature and say that it points to God. When we see suffering, I think what we are experiencing is an invitation from God.

Most of us react naturally to suffering and find ways to make things better. In doing so, we are doing for God the very thing that we want God to do. It's an immense privilege. Our consciousness and awareness of right and wrong are gifts that enable us to do what God has done and perhaps are still doing.

When the Bible says that we're created in God's image, it's not just that we look like Him (and I'm not sure that we do), it's more that we are able to do, in a small way, what God does.

And look at the world we've created. It too is "imperfect". There are lots that are bad about it, but there are lots that are good and wonderful too. It's odd that those of us who can see the wonders we create cannot see God, and those of us who see God in the wonders of nature cannot see in ourselves the image of God.

The ancients see God as supernatural and something or someone (or someones) so far removed from us that we can only pray for His blessings. Jesus asks that we call God father and asks further that we carry our crosses with him. He came to do his father's w
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did I say he created us imperfect I doubt so but if so apologize - no - created perfect but with a potential perhaps to overstretch and take too many chances? - but there is always a road back heh? and we still haven't found another universe with life on it so seem to be the only ones?? And if I recall my own bible studies I know there are so so many examples of how we can change and become more back to perfect if we want and many of us are either doing this now all over the world or attempting - I have hope!















Boon54 said:
ork. When we carry our crosses, we are doing God's work
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smiley said:
did I say he created us imperfect I doubt so but if so apologize - no - created perfect but with a potential perhaps to overstretch and take too many chances? - but there is always a road back heh? and we still haven't found another universe with life on it so seem to be the only ones?? And if I recall my own bible studies I know there are so so many examples of how we can change and become more back to perfect if we want and many of us are either doing this now all over the world or attempting - I have hope!
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I'm not answering for anyone else. However, my take. From a believers standpoint, are we create perfect? No. We're born with sin. We also have free will, which means we are equally free to be imperfect, as we are perfect (however you define perfection). It's not an "overstretch", it's simply free will, which is pitted with the potential and desires, to be imperfect.

The road back? Faith. Belief. And doing in accord with the writings of the Bible. It's never too late.
 
erhm - mute point any evidence that we were born with sin?? - free will I get ? I was watching a doco recently on how we may have developed from apes??? - that's murky discussion heh - and they dragged poor old Darwin into that one with him exclaiming ........." I didn't say that ; I didn't say that you are misquoting me|"
 
Thank you @Boon54 as the thread OP, for controlling your thread better than others that have directed religious threads to the mediocre extent a few if given a vote would eliminate them on this board like with politics. As I've posted earlier, I disagree with some of your statements, think some are too generalized that could be more relatively stated, though understand what motivates you to feel so that is common with others.

Below is a link to a long, very well done 143 minute archeological anthropological video I've posted herein in the past, to what I consider the best of several YouTube videos on the rise and fall of ancient Mesopotamian civilization that had been lost in the sands of time but in recent decades due to deciphering of clay cuneiform tablets is the only other ancient knowledge source besides the Bible that provides excellent records about our ancient human ancestors as they began to live in large communities.

It is only writings on hard mud clay tablets that have had the physical properties capable of lasting thousands of years at least in a desert region to survive to this modern age. And note, thousands of these tablets are being regularly dug up with large numbers yet to be translated.

There are more focused videos on Mesopotamian specifics with more being added each year, however this is the video I'll recommend one ought start with. Want to talk about the nature of we humans? The video will provide incites found nowhere else. Like an interesting book, one will not put it down. Understanding what that story relates goes a long ways in showing why there is so much evil, killing, and warmongering in the world as much of what happened then spread across the planet. It also will put the much later writings of the Bible into a better context since the Old Testament starts with Adam and Eve, then Abraham, that lived in that region.

 
smiley said:
erhm - mute point any evidence that we were born with sin?? - free will I get ? I was watching a doco recently on how we may have developed from apes??? - that's murky discussion heh - and they dragged poor old Darwin into that one with him exclaiming ........." I didn't say that ; I didn't say that you are misquoting me|"
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I can't answer for the theists.

Man did NOT evolve from apes. Our shared ancestry goes back much farther. And when I say farther, it's measured in millions of years.

Evolution is not a "murky" discussion. It's fact. That is, it's a theory so solid, and so supported by evidence, that to question it is asinine. IMO.
 
very interesting but wanders on too long - seeing as you.ve watched it an analyzed it can you do a summary for the rest of us - we are interested!! talkin about davids submitted video

highly complex topic and discussion and we can get lost in it easily and that would be a shame
 
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