ANONYMOUS WRITES: I grew up in a Christian home. Recently my parents divorced, and I have been going through a rough time. I find that I really don’t believe in God much anymore. I know a lot about God and I know at least some of it is true, but that’s all.
How do y’all know God is who He says he is? How can you fall in love with a concept that requires blind faith? Bible verses, quotes, logic, anything will help. I only know Christianity but I can’t really believe it.
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That is an important question. It must be a pretty rough time that you are going through. Let me ask you a question, if you don’t believe in God, then what do you believe? If you don’t believe in God, then you must believe that our wonderful, beautiful world came about by chance, or that someone, or something else made it. If you don’t believe in God, then you don’t believe that He answers prayer, it just happens by chance. But I as a christian know that that did not happen. God is a loving, and just God. He has a plan for each and every person, he knows and cares for every little sparrow. He knows what you are going through. God has proven himself over, and over to us, but we are people. We have a human nature. We tend to question, even though He has proven Himself to us so much. We are like the Israelites when they were wondering for forty years. Days after God would provide for them, they would question His goodness, and go back to complaining about being provided for. They forgot who saved them from the pharaoh, they forgot who sent them manna and water in the wilderness. Even though God proved Himself to them, they questioned. Even though God provides for us, we as humans question Him. He loves us, to the point of sending His only Son to die for us. And I am so thankful that He does not command success, instead all He asks is for faithfulness. He does not measure us by our success, but asks for faithfulness.
Forgive me for the length of this, I only wanted to tell you that I believe in Him because He has proven Himself over and over again. But we as humans tend to question. Hope that helps. I will be praying for you
Hey, first of all, I’m sorry that you’ve been going through a rough time lately. You’ll be in my prayers and I hope that, even if it breaks you at first, you’ll come out of this stronger. And I want to apologize in advance in case I end up typing too much or if nothing I say is helpful.
My first prayer was a last resort – I was struggling with my mental and physical health, and my friends were slowly abandoning me. I tried opening myself up to God because I figured that “it couldn’t make anything worse” but I was fully expecting nothing to happen. To my surprise, praying gave me a sense of peace that I didn’t realize was possible in the midst of dark circumstances.
From that moment, I knew I wanted to learn more about Christianity, and when I found Jesus, I also found a new perspective on suffering.
You’ve likely already heard the gospel before – God came to earth as a man in the person of Jesus Christ. He was fully God and fully human, He lived the perfect life we could not live and died on the cross as the perfect sacrifice for our sins. After three days He was resurrected, defeating death and providing the way for us to have perfect fellowship with our Creator as long as we accept His sacrifice on our behalf. It’s a message we can too easily accept as a nice story without thinking about what it truly means.
It means that you are never alone. Jesus knows what it’s like to be human. He knows what it’s like to be tired, to have people making demands on Him on all the time, to be betrayed by His friends, to be attacked. He knows sadness, anger, loss, and suffering. That means that you’re never more than a prayer away from being able to talk to someone who knows how you’re feeling right now.
It means that you are seen and heard. God came to earth. He didn’t sit up in Heaven waiting for us to get things right, or waiting for us to mess up. He didn’t run away from us and distance Himself from us. He didn’t leave the weight of salvation on our shoulders. He came down to help us and save us and be with us and set us free, proving that He sees, loves, and cares.
It means that your suffering is not meaningless. A message I love that has helped me so much is one I learned from Jefferson Bethke in his book “Jesus > Religion.” It is this: we may not know what the reason for our suffering is, but we know what the reason isn’t: it’s not because we are not loved. We may not know why God allows suffering, but we know that He must have a good reason or else He wouldn’t have chosen to take our pain upon Himself when He died on the cross.
Dark circumstances still press in on me sometimes but I believe that I can hold Christianity up to the void because it doesn’t shy away from the grittiest, hardest parts of life. Christianity doesn’t say, “Here, figure this mess out for yourself and then you’ll be loved.” Christianity says “It’s okay if you can’t figure this out yourself, you’re already loved.”
Even if you’ve tried prayer before and you felt nothing, that doesn’t mean that God isn’t there. Feelings (or lack thereof) are not always true. But there is evidence for the resurrection of Christ. (One of my favourite pieces of evidence is the fact that the first recorded witnesses to the resurrection were women, and this was in a time and culture where women were not considered worthy or reliable witnesses, so if the authors of the gospel were just making things up, it wouldn’t be logical for them for use women as witnesses in their story.)
Once again, I apologize for the extreme length here! It’s normal to experience times of doubt and navigating through them is a very personal experience. But I do hope that in time you come to know how much Jesus truly loves you despite your sufferings. <3
My parents also got divorced, I had just turned ten at the time. It’s rough, I’m so sorry that it is happening to you as well.
My dad had professed to be a christian but the day that he left our house, he left his six children (I was the oldest), his beautiful young wife, his wedding ring and his Bible.
We really struggled financially those first few years but my mom taught us to thank God for what we had. God always provided for us. People would randomly stop by with truck loads of bakery goods, meat or various other provisions (some hearty and healthy… others not so much. 😉 ) One elderly gentleman would bring us Moon Pies and old bicycles that he would fix up for us.
I had believed in God my whole life it seemed, I didn’t really question it.
When I got my first “real” job, one of my co workers was an argumentative and cocky atheist, he asked me questions I didn’t know how to answer. It really bothered me. I started to wonder, WHY do I believe? Is my eternal destiny simply bound up in circumstantial evidence because I have seen that He will always provide for my family? Or in the “experience” because I have felt touched by a sermon or a song before? To use your words, was it simply, blind faith?
I started to ask questions of my mom, of God and of different books.
There is much historical evidence for Jesus Christ, His life, His death and resurrection. Have you read either of the books, “The Case for Christ” -Lee Strobel or “Man. Myth. Messiah” – Rice Broocks? The Case for Christ is written by Lee Strobel who started his “case” as a devoted atheist.
Do you read the Bible at all? Before reading any other book I would suggest this. Find a quiet place where you won’t be interrupted, be that your bedroom or a coffee shop or a forest near your home. Don’t bring your phone with you and tell anyone else that is around that you would like to have the day to yourself, (Or hour, or afternoon, whatever time period you want.)
Take your Bible, a pen and a notebook. Tell God that you don’t even know if you believe in Him. Ask Him to make Himself known to you through His word. Ask Him to open your heart to be able to read with out bias. If you want to know if someone is alive, or was alive you are going to ask for evidence.
Request your evidence. And start reading, I would say the New Testament first and then the Old, but that is my own preference. You can do it either way.
He doesn’t want to hide Himself from those that are searching. He actually gives the desire to know Him. The fact that you want evidence for God and don’t just want to turn from Him is suggestive of the fact that He already is calling you to Himself. Those who don’t follow God don’t desire to know Him. God gives the desire to know Him, the FAITH to believe in Him. “Lord, I believe, help my unbelief.” (Mark 9:24)
People have doubted, denied and questioned our Lord since the very beginning and yet He uses them and grows them more into His likeness.
Think of Thomas who said that he WOULD NOT believe that Jesus had risen again until he had seen it for himself. Jesus didn’t get all huffy with His doubting disciple, He revealed Himself to Thomas. He gave him the evidence.
Blind faith is indeed foolishness and will falter at the first signs of danger.
God is not blind faith.
For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities–his eternal power and divine nature–have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse. (Romans 1:20)
How to fall in love with that which you cannot see?
As you read God’s word and He reveals Himself to you He will also help you to love Him. Love is a choice and an action.
Not a feeling.
Sure, a feeling will sometime be there but not always.
Just like with people. You don’t always feel really loving toward your parents, (especially when things like divorce happen and all the ugliness and sadness and hurt that comes with that.) but deep down you still love them. Still address them with the respect of “mom” and “dad”. And even when parents sin against us, that doesn’t mean they don’t love us.
Only God will give the kind of love that never gives up and thinks about others more important than ourselves.
I hope this helps, if you have any other questions regarding any of what you are going through, please feel free to contact me on here or more directly on my blog and I can send you an email address.
ohsusannahbaffa.blogspot.com
That was an amazing answer! I was about to comment with much of the same things! Thank you for being so open about your experiences as a child. You seem like the kind of person who would be amazing in the ministry. God bless you and have a wonderful day!
-Rachel
Thank you Rachel. God has truly blessed me and I am happy I share the things He has taught. 🙂
God bless you too!
In Christ, Susannah
So I had planned on keeping my anonymity, but wow! This was what I needed to hear. I have felt God calling me and I will post a comment about it later on. Thanks so much!
Praise God!!
Praying for you!!
Thanks so much! Il be praying for you as well
Thank you! 🙂
Hey, first i should apologize, because i don’t speak in english perfectly haha.
And i understand you, because I’m going through the same and i know that is hard…I’ll be praying for you, but you must too should praying for God give you help for understand, believe, and be stronger. It’s also cost to me understand some things, but i pray everyday and say to God “Help me to be stronger, to be patient, to not be a bad person with those who my around” And more… God answer me always.I invite you to prove it. If you know all depends on you’re pray with faith, and if look for God the rest He will complement it. I believe in God for faith and because He gave and give all for me and everyone.
Anything you can tell God..And if you need a friend, too (you can count on me too:))
Check out The Case for Christ and/or The Case for Faith by Lee Strobel. He was an atheist skeptic and set out to disprove Christianity, but ended up finding that the evidence points conclusively to Christ, and he became a Christian. I think you’ll find that following Jesus doesn’t require blind faith but is actually quite a reasonable decision based on the available evidence. 🙂
Sometimes people get confused about Christianity because they see it as a list of rules. But the Word of God teaches heart transformation, not just behavior modification. We have to allow Jesus to come in and change our hearts to be more like Him. The only way we can truly have life is if we let Christ resurrect our dead, sinful hearts.
Another book recommendation is Not a Fan by Kyle Idleman. It’s an easy read about being a fan of Jesus versus a true follower.
Hang in there, friend. It’s okay to have questions. God loves you dearly, and He wants to have a real, personal, intimate relationship with you. We may not get all our questions answered in this life, but we can find some answers, and things will make much more sense in the light of eternity.
I personally came to my belief in God from a stressing on my parents side. They did not force me but they raised me as a Christian so I fell right in. After that I experienced a great weekend at what is called Happening. The weekend coordinator is now a good friend of mine and we talk quite a bit. I go work them whenever I can. Anyways, I believe in God because of what he has done for me. God was able to pull me out of some dark places twice now and I wouldn’t be able to do what I’m doing today in school and for my personal life. I pray one day I’ll be able to publish a book too. God has never really shown me anything special, my belief came from discipline more or less. When I was in a dark spot someone or something would remind what I’m doing wrong and then I would kick myself in the pants and start living a better life by choice. Seemingly naturally things would get better. I took that as enough proof for me. That was my experience with God’s goodness.
Hello! Firstly, I want to say thank you for asking this. It’s a very common question that many of us begin to ask at some point in our lives. I also want to say that I’m so proud of you. I remember what it was like to doubt God’s existence and it was probably the scariest time of my life because like you, I grew up in a Christian home and I had never really questioned my core beliefs up until that point. I felt like my whole world had come crashing down and I didn’t feel like I could trust anyone and tell them what I was going through. Finally, I told my mom and I was shocked by her response. I had expected her to pull out all these books about faith and God’s existence but she didn’t. She was very calm and reassuring and encouraged me that I could get through this. I spent several months begging God to show me that He was real, even working at a summer camp telling young kids all about a God I wasn’t sure existed. To get to the point, God used those months to slowly show me that He was real and that He cared about my life as well.
Everyone has their different reasons for believing in God, although some may be very similar and some are very different. For me, one of the biggest reasons is because of the people around me. Many of the most wisest people that I know believe in God and because they are intelligent, there must be something there. Secondly, I am very aware of the brokenness and hurt present in this world, but that means that I have some idea of perfection or of an ideal world. This idea of goodness and perfection must be created by a good and just God. This last reason is a very personal reason. My first week at the summer camp I was working at, there was one girl who did not seemed very interested in the bible discussions and stuff. But one day, she came up to me out of the blue and said to me, “I see God in you.” Well, I was obviously shocked by this and wasn’t sure how to respond. It did not hit me until later, but if that girl could see something I couldn’t see, God working in my life, then He couldn’t be just a man-made idea, He had to be real. Children see the world from a different perspective.
I want to encourage you to keep asking and continue looking. I know it’s scary and sometimes you may feel like curling up in a ball, but it’s worth it in the end. When you finally come to realize that God does exist, with your own reasons to believe, it’s truly a beautiful moment and those months of waiting for an answer finally seem worth it. God does care about you and know that He will always be there for you, even when it seems we cannot see Him.
In the midst of a lot of suffering, I started to read my Bible and pray as a last resort. It transformed me; He transformed me. I began to see God as not just a possible being up in the sky, but the Lord of all, my Savior, who adopted me as his child, planned out every minute of my life for my ultimate good and his glory, and continues to sustain me.
I’d advise you to please, read the Bible and pray. It might seem like just a book at first. But it isn’t. The word of God is living and active, sharper than a two edged sword. It has the power to convict us and to to reach into our souls with the truth. Faith comes through hearing, and hearing through God’s word. Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Seek him, and he will reveal himself to you. (Hebrews 4:12, Romans 10:17, James 4:8)
“I believe in the sun even when it is not shining. I believe in love even when I cannot feel it. I believe in God even when he is silent.” Author unknown, written in a cellar during the Holocaust.
Why believe in God? Why not? God is amazing, powerful, and the greater of the heavens and earth. Yes times get rough and tough, but lights shine brighter in the darkness. And everything that happens (I believe anyway) is in God’s plan. For example, Last Christmas, (as in 2015) I made a really big mistake, and it all just kept on adding up and adding up and adding up, but if I hadn’t of made that mistake, I never would’ve felt the same drive that I am feeling right now to make music and to help others. Now to be clear, I am not saying I am grateful that I made that mistake, I AM NOT, but it proves my point that when bad things happen, good things come out of that.
I am getting a little off track, so back to the question. Why do I believe in God? Well because he has been so good to me and to human kind in general. Without God we wouldn’t even BE here. Another reason why I believe in God: Forgiveness. When I made that mistake, I thought nobody would ever forgive me again. I was wrong, and I know that because after that I started reading the Bible and I read that Jesus died for our sins. Now I already knew that because it is said countless times in church, but it never felt real to me. Final reason of why I believe in God (I could go on and on but I don’t think anyone would appreciate that), God loves me. God loves everyone. Everything. Why wouldn’t he? He created it all.
Well I am done, hope this helped!
Also, this might sound bad, but I don’t know how else to say it, it is nice to have SOMETHING to believe in other than mankind. There, I am done.
I should also add that when I went on a missions trip to Haiti, you could see Jesus everywhere! Haiti is pretty much just one big church. So even through Hurricane Matthew and the 2010 earthquake, they still believe in God. That right there is proof to me that God exists.
Hi Anonymous, lately I’ve also been questioning my faith, like literally yesterday I asked my self some of the same questions you are asking. Personally, I’ve found that my greatest proof for God is what he’s done in my life. Looking back I see a plan and a pattern of events woven together in a way that could not be coincidence. I see answered prayers and little miracles. To me those things stack up against any doubts. I can doubt what I’ve heard from other and I can doubt what I’ve read but I can’t doubt what I’ve witnessed first hand.
One day I became hysterical, I couldn’t stop crying and screaming, I tried breathing deep, counting to ten, nothing worked. My parents started getting upset with me but no matter what I did I couldn’t stop. Finally I remembered that I could call on God for help, so I just started repeating “In Jesus’ name Satan Go Away, In Jesus’ name Satan Go Away,” suddenly my mood changed, in mere seconds, after an hour of hysterics I was laughing, in fact I couldn’t stop smiling! That was one of the more bizzare instances but even the tinsiest answered prayers make me believe without a doubt that there has to be a God.
PS. If you’d like, I know of a great little book called How to Know God Exist, it’s super informative, scientific and it’s pretty short too.
I should try that sometime! I might not get hysterical but still I think it would work.
First, thank you for you honesty. It’s really good to admit your struggles, and I think if you can find a good church and share this with them they can help you more than me.
I’m going to take a kind of metaphysical approach. It’ll be really long, and I apologize.
So first, the existence of a god or supreme being of some sort. Assuming nothing comes from nothing (I can prove this if you want, but it’s long) we can say that for anything to exist something must be inherently existent. Plato called it an Uncaused Cause — something that guides everything else, but itself never changes.
Now, some people say matter is inherently existent and I’ll get to that in a second. But first, let’s look at some of the claims in scripture: in Exodus 3:14 God gives his personal name to Moses saying “I AM WHO I AM”. The Hebrew word that we translate that from is Yahweh (YHWH) and means “I am the one who exists”. God is claiming to be ultimate, and it’s a name used all through the Bible. He’s saying that he is the Uncaused Cause. That would make sense because a personal god would be able to create information like we see in DNA.
Okay, other people say matter is the Uncaused Cause, so let’s deal with that. This is hard, but astro-science over the last few decades has shown a pattern of the universe expanding — which begs the question, what is it expanding into? This means there must be something outside of our sphere of existence for matter to go into, and that matter in fact does change — which would mean that it can’t be Uncaused.
On the flip side of that, and assuming it’s always been expanding, you could go back in time to the point were it would’ve been so small that there was zero space. And where there is no space, matter won’t fit. So there’s another hole in that theory.
Of the two, god is clearly the more logical theory. (Yes I’m biased because I’m a Christian, but you can always study this for yourself.)
So, now to show that not only is there a god, but He is the God of the Bible.
Real quick though, the Bible itself says that we are futile in our thinking because of sin (Romans 1:25ish). That means that even the most flawless logic can’t get us to God. Believing him will always go against a part of you, because the basis of sinful nature (which we all have) is rejecting God (Romans 1 again).
Um, this is getting super long though and I need to get off the site real quick, so I’ll be back.
Ok, whats part two?
Yeah, I want to read that!
I’m so sorry but I’ll have to wait til tomorrow. What I wanted to say takes a lot of thought to put into words, and if I tried it now I’d be too tired. I’ll have it by tomorrow night.
(Part 2)
Okay, I said I would explain how not only is there a god, but He’s the God of the Bible so I guess it would be good to start with a few biblical claims about who he is. The most basic one is that he is personal, not just a vague force. Like I said, this makes sense because it would take an intellect to create the laws of nuture and the information in DNA (ect.).
Others include that he created everything but Himself (Genesis 1), that he is ultimate, and that all things happen under his control (Act 17:28). — all consistent with the Uncaused Cause thing we already talked about.
This gives credit to the Bible because, if my logic is right so far, at least parts of it are true. From here, I do sort of jump the gap to say that if some parts are true than these two verses are true : 2 Timothy 3:16 “All scripture is breathed out by God…” And Number 23:18, “God is not man that he should lie, or human that he should change his mind”.
So if God, who never lies, wrote this book then it must be true. And if he wrote all of it, all of it is true.
If that’s right, then the way to know God is through his word, and the way to believe him is to know him. Do I would encourage you to study the Word.
I hope this has been helpful Delaney, and that I didn’t waste your time. Ultimately the way to believe God is to see that your sin deserves death, and trust Jesus’ work on the cross as the only way you can be saved. I just prayed for you, and will again if I think of it.
I know my logic isn’t super tight through this last part, so I would love y’all’s input if you want. (And yes, “y’all’s” is a word)
It was good, your logic seemed good. And of course y’all’s a word, even Spanish has a word, Ustedes (which means you all but it’s really the same difference.
I know, y’all just makes more sense! Do you ever just squish a ton of words to together with if like “y’all’re” or “y’all’ll”?
Yeah, I think I’ve only done it once. Maybe I’ll try sometime.
I do it so often it’s not even funny. #okiegrammar
Hi, peoples! I had planned to stay anonymous, but in the short time between when I submitted this question and when it was published, God has really spoken to my heart. I want to share the story that I now have. Like I said in th epost, I have been doubting God. So much so that I did not even take communion at church because I thought I didn’t believe in “all that.” Strangely enough though, I didn’t stop reading my bible and doing my devotional each day. I thought through how I could rid my life of Christianity (which would take a whole lot for this bible baby who lives in the buckle of the Bible Belt :)) I thought through throwing out my Christian shirts (of which most of mine are) ending church involvement, the whole nine yards, but I never quit reading. I remember one day, several days ago, that I was reading something written by Paul. Randomly, I realized that I was believing what I was reading and was enjoying it. Satan immediately tried to make me doubt but this time I didn’t give in. I decided to just read. I am a huge overthinnker and I think that that is why I doubt. I say that I can’t seer god. I say I can’t ‘know” he exists, but deep down, in an intangible way, I know he is there. I realize that my view of my father (who has walked out on me and hurt me in many ways) has tragically affected my view of God. I have started telling myself not to think about it. To just rest in the deep down knowledge that he is truly there. I can look back to times when I have seen his work.
I was a little sad when I found out that my question wouldn’t be published for a week and a half. Now I realize that had I had all of theses answers then, I would have looked at them in a very biased, nonbelieving way. Now I am able to apply what God has shown me. Thank you all so much for your encouragements and advice.
Hey Delaney,
I totally understand your struggles…this is a battle that I believe most Christians face sometime or another in life…I faced it several years ago, and I understand—it was really tough to get through! But just like you, my answers came from the Bible, the Word which Satan was trying to make me doubt.
God spoke right to my heart in the midst of my doubt, just as He spoke to you. 💚
Think about this:
Do all the founders of any pagan belief have power to touch the heart of one who reads their works? No, because they’re all dead.
Does Satan try to make people doubtful when they are immersed in cults or pagan religions? No, because those poor followers are absolutely no threat to him..they are already enslaved in evil, just as he wants them.
The Word of God surely is alive and powerful…and I’m so glad God speaks to us through it.
I know these battles are terrible and heartbreaking for you, but please hold on to Jesus. God has something amazing in store for you, or else Satan would not be trying so hard to make you doubt God. Keep your eyes on Jesus, and let Him lead you through this dark time. I’m praying for you! God has certainly answered many of your questions already, but I know He is faithful to answer any others that you have too 💜
Read Psalms 27 & 91 and Isaiah 43…I have found them to be a great comfort to my soul in difficult times, and I believe you will as well. The movies God’s Not Dead 1&2 are also amazing faith builders…I believe you would really like them and find them to be a blessing to you if you haven’t seen them yet. God bless! 💜
Thanks, Hannah! You are so right. And I love those movies!
Delaney, thank you for this. Your story sounds not unlike mine. I was raised by two missionaries, homeschooled, and thanks to my teacher-mom I knew the bible more thoroughly as a young child than most adults. However, none of that seemed to matter much when my parents underwent a painful and ugly divorce when I was twelve, right at that crucial age of asking questions. I had a lot of anger towards my dad, which translated into anger and mistrust toward God the father, and questioning “If He is really there and He really cares about me, why did this happen to me?”
I came to terms with God’s existence very early on, and I have never looked back from that. For me, the greatest proof of God’s existence (and perhaps greater than that, the proof that God is the Christian God,) was the miracles that I had seen. My mom was and is a woman of prayer, and she not only told us we could pray and expect results, she showed us. We didn’t have much money, and we had several instances where some appliance would break; my mom would gather my siblings and me around it, we would pray, and it would immediately begin working. When we had no money for gas, after we prayed our gas needle would go up as we drove, not down, or someone would inexplicably give us the exact amount of money we needed. I could go on, but suffice it to say there were several personal experiences we had with God’s provision that even today I can’t explain other than to say that God did it.
Now, that doesn’t mean that I don’t still grapple with the issue to some degree. I certainly have ‘down times’ where I question if God exists. The aspects that I struggle with the most, however, are believing that God is good and kind, and that He is a father different altogether from the father experiences that I’ve had, that He is a gentle, caring, protective parent who wants to see me grow. I’ve struggled for years and continue to struggle. What has been helpful for me is connecting with my youth leaders, especially my youth pastor, and doing some counseling with them. Also, the sword of the spirit is the word of God. Once you determine in your heart that it is truth, it can cut through doubt like nothing else can. I can’t tell you if that wall that comes up to ‘God the father’ ever goes away completely, but I can tell you that it gets better. #preachingtomyself
Thank you for your transparency here. Thank you for encouraging and challenging me with your story. If there is one last thing that I could say to you? Deuteronomy 33:27. We WILL make it through this, sister. I will be praying for you. <3
Thanks so much, Christina! I talk to me youth leaders as well and they are amazing.
That is such a blessing, I have been praying hard for you!!!
Thanks for praying for me!
Sure, I was glad to do it
Thank you so much for sharing Delaney!
Delaney, I just wrote a super long comment for you, but it’s waiting for approval. @Jaquelle, I promise there is nothing inappropriate about my comment, really.
Haha! I guess you just look suspicious 🕵🏼
Yeah. My comment has disappeared into the abyss of the Reb. I may never actually see it again.
I had the same problem! I spent like an hour (no kidding. It was a bit ridiculous xD) on a comment….and it dissapeared. Which is kind of sad because I spent a lot of time on it lol.
Delaney, my comment finally got approved, FYI. It took two weeks, but they finally decided I’m not a dangerous Rebelutionary.
Yay!😆
Hello Delaney!
Thank you so much for your honesty in asking this question. Being honest is one of the most freeing things you can do: “the truth will set you free” (John 8:32). I just want to encourage you…like your father, my father also walked out on me and deeply hurt me. He has separated himself completely from my family, and is not even paying for my mom, brother and I to eat. My mom has had to go to work, all while continuing to home school my brother and I. Throughout the whole process, I have struggled with a great deal of hurt and the Lord is ever-teaching me how to forgive. However, the one thing that the Lord has shown me over and over is that He is such a Good, Good Father and will never leave or forsake me! He has a plan for your life, and He “is distressed when you are distressed”. (Isaiah 63:9). Here are some encouraging verses that talk about the Lord being a Father, as well as faithful: Psalm 68:5,146:9, Isaiah 9:6, 63:16, 64:8, 49:23b, 49:15.
Please know that I will be praying for you! The Lord “is a rewarder of those who earnestly seek Him” (Hebrews 11:6), and He will never let you down as you stay faithful to His Word and His Truth. Like you, I have seen the Lord work in amazing ways in our family’s life, and I know that He will do the same for you.
Just as a closing verse: ““Look at the nations and watch—
and be utterly amazed. For I am going to do something in your days that you would not believe, even if you were told.” The Lord has used this verse to remind me that He is still working and He still has a plan for us…an amazing plan!
Here’s an encouraging song for you: “Good, Good Father” by Chris Tomlin:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CqybaIesbuA
Thanks so much, savannah! I love that song! Have you heard anthem lights version?
I believe in God like the sunshine, I can see it everywhere I go everyday, even the cloudy ones. I didn’t have friends growing up, so when high school started I really needed one. I prayed for months for a friend I could connect to on a more spiritual level and have engaging conversations about Christ and the world around us, and he delivered. Her name is Alivia McGuire and she is the greatest person I have ever met, she was the one who introduced me to the Rebelution first. That is all it takes me to know God is real, is that he sent the one person I had prayed for for a long time.
Growing up in a Christian home is such a blessing but it can be hard to make your faith your own and not just an inheritance from your parents. So, as you struggle with the question of who God is to you, my advice would be just ask Him! Ask the Lord, “if you are real, reveal yourself to me.” He will answer.
Regarding blind faith, I think that once you encounter God it is hard to miss Him. The heavens declare the glory of God! If you doubt that God is real, just go outside and look around and tell me how this beautiful world was made if it wasn’t made by a loving Creator. Every act of kindness, every time that God provides for you, every moment of peace, they are all little glimpses of how much God loves YOU! He loves you so much that I can’t even describe it to you. You are made in His image and if you have trusted in Him, then you are His princess/prince! So don’t doubt when you can’t see God, physically. The Bible tells us that blessed are those who believe even when they have not seen.
Just give Him your heart, then rest in His love.
Praying for you!
Read through lamentations. It might sound odd but you’d be surprised. Psalms like 88 as well and other psalms of lament. When things like this happen it can shake your foundations. Maybe the question is actually why don’t you believe in him or even why can’t you believe?
I believe in him, I love and serve him because out of the depths he heard my cry. When the waters rolled over me he took me and set my feet on solid ground. Sometimes you lose the hallelujah because life is just unbearably hard. My situation was different from yours but there was a time when I wasn’t talking to God, I wasn’t sure that I believed in him. If he was even there, he was not the loving God that I had been told about. He seemed so callous and aloof and I didn’t understand why he was letting these things happen. He promised to look after us and yet he was just leaving my family drowning in the pain.
In times like that, there is only one thing you can do and that’s hold on by the finger nails. Even if the most you can do each day is repeat to yourself the words of Psalm 42, ‘Hope in God O my soul for I shall yet praise him’ then keep telling yourself that even if it doesn’t feel true right now. Be honest with God. Read Job and the Psalms and Lamentations and bring your case to God. You can do that. It’s ok to do that.
So yeah, as hard as it is right now you have to hold on. And if you find yourself slipping remember that none can be lost from God’s hand. He’s not letting you go anytime soon. Take time to lament and to be angry and to ask questions of God because it will help you heal.
In the words of Paul, ‘Stand fast in the faith, be brave, be strong.’
This is really good. Thanks so much!
Glad if it’s helpful 🙂
I read something in Romans recently that I thought might encourage you. It’s a little strong, but it’s the Bible:
“For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.”–Romans 1:18-22
It can definitely sometimes be discouraging. Why isn’t God acting how we want him to when we want him to? But God’s ways are always above our ways. I hope this is encouraging to you. I just ran across it I think the day I first read this question.
I’ll be praying!
Hey Jason! I think it’s really neat that you mentioned these verses, and they’re helpful, but it might be good to balance it out with another passage (maybe from Romans 3, or 8). The whole book goes together and since Paul doesn’t leave it at God’s wrath –but uses it as a way to explain grace and the gospel — we should do the same.
Just a suggestion, I don’t want to be a comment dictator.
No. Thanks Okie! That’s really true and helpful. I wasn’t even reading Romans when I came across this. I had printed it out and put it in my an old notebook, and it was just really cool to find it.
But yes. . .Romans 8 is such a beautiful chapter as well aka. like my favorite chapter in the whole Bible, and I really hope my comment didn’t come across as judgmental. Doubt is something everyone goes through, and this is a very hard situation. Please forgive me if anything I said felt judging!
Oh no! I’m not at all offended. I think it’s a really good point, and worth considering — it’s just not the end of the story. I hope I wasn’t rude.
It’s scary to open up and talk about our doubts. I admire your courage and honesty. You’re certainly not alone in feeling this way. Sometimes God feels so far away and it feels like we’re faking it. The key is to not let doubt stop you from seeking Him. Even the Old Testament believers (e.g., Job and David) went through pain and sometimes felt far away from God. But when they doubted His goodness, they didn’t let it fester inside — they cried out to God, they questioned Him openly. Even if it feels forced, let your doubt drive you to talk to God even more. I find Phil 4:6 helpful: “Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and pleading, with thanksgiving, make your requests known to God.”
I’ve never seriously doubted God’s existence, but I have doubted His favor. Sometimes I felt cold towards God, like He wasn’t listening to me. I felt I had sinned one too many times and this time, He wouldn’t forgive me. It was a scary feeling. I hadn’t realized what Christ’s sacrifice accomplished, that He is even MORE gracious and forgiving than I am sinful! Back to doubts, though: I think God may sometimes allow us to feel far away from Him as a “wake up call” to remind us to seek Him. I know it’s done that for me when I’ve been neglecting to pray and read His Word. I pray God blesses you with firm conviction of His presence and goodness.
Also, I recommend the book More Than a Carpenter by Josh McDowell. It’s about whether Jesus is who he said he is, and whether he claimed to be God at all.
I’ll take this time to say that I feel like I just go through the motions sometimes. I hardly ever read the bible and feel like Emmet from The Lego Movie walking into a mass gathering of master builders. However, here’s the juicy part: I still believe in God.
I know, somewhere in my head, he finds reason to believe in me. How is it I can pick up my pen and send 3 pages worth of writing to the printer in 30-45 minutes? I have some sort of ability, something I can use for the greater good that God has instilled in me. To conclude my comment, I’ll say this:
If God has faith in the guy who hasn’t taken the first steps towards him, or even his own destiny, God has faith in you too.
Also, I can never seem to stop typing, so that is why I can praise you for your courage in coming forward. If God is inside of us, then you don’t need to explain to him what’s going on because he knows it’s important. I went through divorce when I was 7 years old and the scars still hold. Lastly, God has patience. So long as you are willing to come forth and willing to come back to him, he is willing to make you his greatest asset of all.
I will stop typing now… 😉
that’s encouraging.
Dear Anonymous,
Firstly, I applaud you for your bravery in posting these questions. Asking these type of questions reveal insecurities, doubts, and lapses in faith and require courage and bravery in voicing them. You are at a point in your life that all young people raised in Christian homes must pass through, and that is making the faith of your parents the your own. It’s taking all the head knowledge you’ve accumulated over the years and letting is travel down the 18 inches to your heart. I know that you have doubts about what you know about God and that the pain from your parents’ recent divorce is causing you to question the character and trustworthiness of an invisible God. However, I firmly believe that if you remain faithful and firmly make the decision to blindly trust your Heavenly Father even though your earthly parents have failed you, that you will come out of this with greater faith and a stronger belief in the truths of the Bible than you would have without this experience. But on the other hand, if you allow the Enemy to grow these seeds of doubt into a thriving tree that will choke out the light of the gospel in your life, you will join the ranks of those who make up the statistics of at 80% of young people raised in Christian walk away from the faith of their parents. I earnestly pray and hope that will not be your story!
Now to answer your questions…
As I was praying over and seeking the Lord’s direction in regards to your doubts, the passage He brought to mind was Jeremiah 29:11-14a. Now the first verse in this passage is one of the most well known and most often quoted verses in the Bible. However, the part I want you to focus on is after verse eleven.
“For I know the plans I have for you, declares the LORD, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will hear you. You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart. I will be found by you, declares the LORD.”
This promise was given to the people of Israel after they were sent into exile in Babylon. It is a promise of hope; a promise that God will always be there, you just need to reach out to Him; and a promise that if you seek God whole-heartedly, you will find Him. Also notice the last sentence. “I will be found by you.” God isn’t playing hide-and-seek with us, and He isn’t trying to dodge us like the plague. He is patiently waiting for us to search Him out, to talk with Him, and genuinely want to know Him—not know facts about Him, but to actually form a personally relationship with Him. He promises that if we call upon Him and come and pray to Him, He will hear us.
God often allows difficult trying things into our lives to test us and see if during these times we will draw closer to Him or reject and blame Him. This was true for the people of Israel who rebelled again God and lived in idolatry. God allowed the growing empire of Babylon to defeat the Israelites and take them in to captivity. However, God didn’t give up or leave His people. It was during this time that the promises in Jeremiah 29 were given. So don’t let this trial make you doubt what you know about God, but let it draw you closer and into deeper relationship with the One who is waiting for you to turn to Him.
It can be a scary thing to step into the unknown; to put yourself out there for something that as you say requires “blind faith.” So I have another verse for you. This one is from Malachi 3:10 and the context is God rebuking Israel for not giving Him a tithe or portion of their abundance. I know that this may seem irrelevant, but bear with me. While this verse if talking about tithes, specifically that of produce and grain, the core issue was that the Israelites where unwilling to trust God. They were holding back their produce because they were afraid of being without food. But see what God tells them:
“‘Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. Test me in this,’ says the LORD Almighty, ‘and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that you will not have room enough for it.’”
God told them to test Him, and see if He will not pour out abundant blessings upon them! The same is true for us with our heart and our affections. It’s not that God wants our stuff and needs more, but He wants us to trust Him. He wants us to trustingly give ourselves to Him and watch His faithfulness at work and see Him provide for us and give us abundantly more than we could ever imagine. So as you resolve to step out in faith and trust, giving God your heart, remember this verse and that whatever you trustingly give God, He will more than adequately give back.
Another question you ask is “how can you fall in love with a concept that requires blind faith?” I love how you use the term “fall in love” because that is what God wants—a loving relationship with us. But this doesn’t happen overnight. “Falling in love” happens over time and faithfulness in pursuing a close relationship. So don’t worry if you’re not “in love” yet. Just be patient and earnestly seek after God and test Him and see if He won’t reveal Himself to you.
Finally, you ask how we can know God is who He says He is. This is something that requires faith, but I have written a lengthy article on showing God’s trustworthiness from Scripture. So if you’re really looking for answers, you can visit http://www.soifixmyeyes.com/who-is-god-series/2-trustworthy and discover the trustworthiness of God and that truth that He does not lie.
I know that this has been a VERY long reply to your questions, but I feel that these are important to answer and vital to your spiritual well being. I hope that this has been helpful and not tedious, and that you will take all these things to heart and start seeking after the true and living God. Remember God’s promise in James 4:8, “Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you.”
I’m praying for you as you wrestle with your faith and seek answers to these big questions! Don’t let the Enemy win this battle for your heart, but keep fighting and searching after truth!
Your sister in Christ,
Kristin
Hebrew 12:1-3
It’s quite simple to explain the existence of God. It’s a well know scientific law that matter cannot be created or destroyed. Matter doesn’t pop in and out of existence. With this in mind, how can the universe be here without a Creator? There is no other possible explanation. We can also believe who God says he is through what he does. If someone told you that they could eat a whole pizza in one sitting, you’d want to see them do that in order to test if what they said was true. In the same way, we can test what God says about himself by looking at what he does. God reveals his nature in his dealing with humanity. We can see in the flood that he is a just God, but also a merciful God toward those who have faith in him. Jesus’ dealing with mankind show who God is. We see that Jesus was loving, gracious, merciful, meek, loving, caring, and so much more!
>Matter doesn’t pop in out and out of existence
Actually, it kind of does. See quantum mechanics.
>how can the universe be here without a Creator? There is no other possible explanation
Actually, there are. Several in fact. Multiverse, big bang, oscillating universe model, etc. You are clearly not educated enough to state whether there are or not alternative explanations to the universe’s existance. It’s fine if you have a religion, just don’t try to explain its existence with your clear lack of knowledge on science in general (see God-of-the-gaps fallacy).
Good day.
There is an article called Quantum physics: The Discovery that scientifically demolished materialism. The author states this in his article.
“The quantum model of universe is an attempt to purge the Big Bang of its creationist implications. Supporters of this model base it on the observations of quantum (subatomic) physics. In quantum physics, it is to be observed that subatomic particles appear and disappear spontaneously in a vacuum. Interpreting this observation as matter can originate at quantum level, this is a property pertaining to matter, some physicists try to explain the origination of matter from non-existence during the creation of the universe as a property pertaining to matter and present it as a part of laws of nature. In this model, our universe is interpreted as a subatomic particle in a bigger one.
However this syllogism is definitely out of question and in any case cannot explain how the universe came into being. William Lane Craig, the author of The Big Bang: Theism and Atheism explains why:
A quantum mechanical vacuum spawning material particles is far from the ordinary idea of a “vacuum” (meaning nothing). Rather, a quantum vacuum is a sea of continually forming and dissolving particles, which borrow energy from the vacuum for their brief existence. This is not “nothing,” and hence, material particles do not come into being out of nothing. 1
So in quantum physics, matter does not exist when it was not before. What happens is that ambient energy suddenly becomes matter and just as suddenly disappears becoming energy again. In short, there is no condition of existence from nothingness as is claimed.”
So matter cannot and doesn’t come from nothing. Rather it is changing from energy to matter and then back again. As for your second comment, your are right in saying that there are other ways to describe how the universe came into existence, its just that none of the other explanation are true. The multiverse theory can be rejected due to Occam’s razor which states that the more assumptions you have to make about something, the more unlikely an explanation is. You must make many, many assumptions to believe in the multiverse theory, so it is better to not believe it because there are so many assumptions to make.
The Big Bang theory tries to rationalize that you can get something from nothing, because that one particle that became the universe had to come from somewhere.
Let’s admit it; I wrote a LOT. I hope you can get something out of my pages of info! In fact, it was so long that I had to split it up into several parts so that it would actually get posted
To be honest, at first I believed in God because that seemed the way to go. I still remember kneeling as a little 5-year-old in my parent’s bedroom while my mom did her makeup, asking God to come into my heart.
I pretty much had no idea what that meant other than that I was “saved” and would now go to Heaven.
However, I am now 14 and have spent the last two years trying to figure out what I believe and why it matters.
I believe in Christ because the Bible points to Him, science points to Him, the past shows His presence, and so does our daily life. Bear with me here!
First of all, the Bible. The entire OT points to Christ, in fact, the whole thing is the “rising action” leading to the climax of the story; Christ. The Bible is completely historically correct, and many prophecies mentioned in the Bible, such as that of Alexander the Great, have come true. There is no proven historical evidence that points to the falsity of the Bible.
Second, the scientific evidence. There is not one scientific fact in the Bible that is not supported by modern science. The Institute for Creation Research (icr.org) is a wonderful database and news center for this subject. They have many, many scientists that publish volumes of scientific research in easy-to-read articles both on the website and in their magazine “Acts and Facts”.
Thirdly, He is shown in our daily life. Think about it. Where would we be without a God to give us our rules, morals, aspirations, and dreams? No better off or different from the animals we are surrounded by. I’m not kidding. After all, where would we get our morals? Our motivations to build mighty civilizations, or our reasons to uphold those once they are created? I’m going to divide this section into two parts. It’s going to be long :).
Agh everything I write is waiting for approval……. C’mon!!! Lol
Haha, it finally went though! Hurrah! 🙂
Oh something else I wanted to address. You said in your question “How can you fall in love with something that requires blind faith?” You have, like many others, fallen prey to the common line “There is no proof for Christianity. All the evidence is on evolution’s side, and Christians are just blindly following their own ideas without thinking about them”. Don’t feel bad; it is a common mistake, one that I used to make.However, in the Bible it is said that “It is the glory of God to conceal a matter, and to seek out a matter is the glory of kings”. (That is somewhere around Psalms/Proverbs I think. Exactly where I don’t know). Which means that the LAST thing God wants Christians to do is blindly following Him without any idea why. If you think that Christianity is just a matter of blindly following God, then you are not digging deep into it. I recommend More than a Carpenter by Josh McDowell as well as Mere Christianity by C.S.Lewis. Those two books are extremely helpful in this area, and they helped me come back to Christ from my world of apathy. Christianity STRONGLY supports science because it is the exploration of God’s creation. Hold on… what? Christianity supports science?!?!?! Isn’t that exactly what Christians are against? God v. science, right? Faith versus reason?
NO. No, no, no, and again, no. What Christians should be against is the modern scientific worldview; a naturalistic, anti-theistic atheism that says nature and matter is all there is and God cannot possibly exist. After all, they say, who needs God when all the answers are found in evolution? That is not Christian; neither is a belief in evolution, deism, etc. (While I cannot give an in-depth answer to why Christianity overcomes this without writing another book (which I’m sure you don’t want me to do xD), you can visit icr.org, where your Christian questions about science are answered. Total Truth by Nancy Pearcey is a wonderful book on worldview, if you are interested in that) However, what Christianity STRONGLY supports is the exploration and discovery of God’s creation in all its complexity through scientific research and experimentation; not the anti-God, pro evolution connotation we often call to mind when we hear the word science.
You don’t have to keep your Christian beliefs in the private sector. Don’t keep it in a little box that you open every Sunday for church, and close again when you leave. Explore God’s creation, study history to your heart’s content, etc., but do it with God in mind; science was never meant to be limited to the study of evolution.
Do you mind explaining what you mean by the “common trap of evolutionists’ propaganda”? What propaganda do you believe is being spread? Are you also stating that someone cannot be a Christian AND believe in evolution? There are thousands of people that believe in both, would you say they are not “true” Christians?
Sure! There are three basic mistakes that a Christian commits when he says he believes in evolution. I’ll try to go through these as quickly as I can 🙂
Mistake #1: “It’s only about the length of time”
First, most evolutionist Christians tend to trivialize the conflict between evolutionists and creationists by saying its only about time, seeing as merely a dispute on how the word “day” in Genesis 1 is figurative or literal. The logic behind this is that if God meant “days” as long periods of time, then evolution and creation fit seamlessly. If that was as far as it wen, then yes. However, it’s not the whole picture, and relies on Christian misinterpretation of the word “evolution” . If it meant only a gradual process of God guided creation, sure! Unfortunately, that’s not quite what evolutionists mean. Take, for instance, the Position Statement of the NABT; “[Evolution is] an unsupervised, impersonal, unpredictable and natural process of temporal descent with genetic modification that is affected by natural selection, chance, historical contingencies and changing environments.” Quite a mouthful! Doesn’t really leave room for God between the “unsupervised” and “impersonal”, does it? If that’s true evolution, obviously God cannot play a part.
Mistake #2:Deism
Deism essentially means that God made all the laws and then sat down with some popcorn to watch the show, doing nothing to intervene. And here comes in the second mistake; God made the laws of chemistry, physics, and so on, and then let evolution take over. So even if evolution was mindless, God still made the laws that controlled it. But that’s not the Creator God of the Bible. Genesis distinctly said that God breathed life into man at the beginning, and has intervened throughout human history. I mean, come on, Jesus came to earth!!! Obviously God wants to interact with us!!!!! Evolutionists recognize that deism does fit in perfectly with their theory; but whatever god that might be certianly isn’t the one of the Bible.
Mistake #3: Faith Versus Reason
The third and most commonly made mistake is that which pits faith against reason. It interprets “in the beginning God created the world” as simply a poetic translation of “Everything came to be by means of evolution”, just as you might say the Mona Lisa is “a beautiful work of art” or “some oil on a piece of canvas”. Both are true, yet they take different perspectives. You might explain this view something like this; “Yes, evolution is a blind process, and yes, all diversity and complexity of life are a result of evolution. Aren’t you glad scientific reasoning has discovered all this knowledge? Of course this does not affect my faith at all because I know God is our personal, loving Creator, because science has to do with reason and religion is simply faith”. Now this is obviously wrong. I oversimplified that quite a bit; you’re not going to find the faith v. reason argument expressed that simply and easily in real life. But thats what often happens; faith is privatized and “reason” is publicized. In other words, we keep religion in our bedroom to cuddle with at night, and when we go outside we take scientific reason on a walk and see no problem in doing so. We don’t connect the two, in fact, they hardly ever meet. If they did, we think, they’d tear each other to pieces, we can’t have that! I already addressed this in the comment above.
So when a Christian says they belive in evolution, make sure they know what that means. To be honest, a God-guided, natural process isn’t really refuted in the Bible; but actual evolution is.
Now, on to your next question; are evolutionist Christians still true Christians? And the answer is yes!!!!! Our scientific beliefs, however controversial or confusing, do not affect that Christ is the Messiah, fully man and fully God, who was sent to Earth by His Father, the Creator-God of the Old Testament, to ransom us from our sins by dying on the cross and rising again three days later, then ascending into Heaven to sit at the right hand of His Father, Yahweh. If we believe this and profess our faith in Christ a the Way, the Truth, and the Light, then we are Christians no matter what our scientific beliefs.
Oh hey, I wrote another book! 😀 Sorry, hope I answered your questions anyway!
Thanks for explaining, I appreciate the time you put into your response. However, I am still curious what “evolutionists’ propaganda” means. Though your answer was good, I feel like it may have been for a different question.
Lol, sorry. You are probably right, I do get a bit off track sometimes. 😀 Thanks for being so patient!
What I meant by evolutionists’ propaganda in this instance was that they tend to restrict faith to the private sector and give a hard time to anyone who doesn’t. Modern scientists often put Christianity onto a shelf labeled “Foolish Theories for People who Can’t Cope with the Real World”, not regarding it as another scientific approach to creation but rather as something people believe in because it makes them feel good, even though it has no grounds in fact. In other words, they find it perfectly fine for people to go to church and pray and read their Bibles (at least the ones I’ve spoken to), but when it comes to the “real world” of how things actually work, Christianity just doesn’t have a place.
Essentially what I meant by propaganda was the idea that Christianity was not meant to be anything outside of the comforting voice in your head that you only listen to in the private sector. It is the idea that in the home, Christianity may thrive, but in the real world, where we discuss actual facts and theories, Christianity has as much place as a horse and carriage at a NASCAR meet; old, out of date, and laughable.
Hope that answered your question a little better! 😀
I am so sorry to hear that you are going through such a rough time right now! 🙁 My parents are also going through a divorce right now, so I know how it feels. About a year ago, my church did a small group study called, ‘Behold your God’ by John Snyder. It helped me see who God is and how to know Him better. I don’t know where I would be spiritually right now if my church had not done that study! I don’t want to make this comment to long, so I will give you three ideas:
1. Pray. Talk to God as if He was a person sitting with you. Pour out your heart to Him. My sister finds it helpful to write down her prayers.
2. Read your Bible for 30 minutes each day. I get up at 6:00 each morning and read my bible first thing. Make it the biggest priority of the day.
3. Get a ‘Behold your God’ book. You can get one on amazon. There is a DVD set that goes with them, but they are kind of expensive! :/ Go to Beholdyourgod.org to listen to some of the best sermons out there from some of the best pastors!
I hope this helps you!
“Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. Matthew 7:7 Ask God to reveal himself to you.
I am so sorry.
Please keep in mind that God is not punishing you with these trials. He’s preparing to launch you into an amazing future. I can’t tell you that God is real and make you believe–you have to find that knowledge for yourself. Just take a moment and consider everything around you, all of nature, space, earth, ocean, everything down to the tiniest of atoms. How can this work by chance? How can this be without a Supreme Creator with a Divine Plan?
I know blind faith can be tough sometimes, but it doesn’t always have to be blind. If you prayerfully and earnestly study the Scriptures and pray to know if you’re loved and if God is real, you’ll get an answer. But it must be done with no doubt in your heart. If you truly want and seek and answer, you’ll get one. Keep in mind that it can come in any way, shape, or form. It could come immediately, or in ten years. It could come by a thought, a feeling, or a person. Just be patient and trust in God. Once you get your answer, don’t let it go. Take it and run with it. Run to God. Strengthen your relationship with Him, and you’ll be able to overcome anything.
I promise.
James 1:5-6
“If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him. But let him ask in faith, nothing wavering. For he that wavereth is like a wave on the sea driven with the wind and tossed.”
This is a exactly what I wanted to say, but you put it beautifully!
Oh, thank you!! 💖
Hello, Delaney!
I am very sorry to hear that your parents are getting divorced! My parents are getting divorced as well, so I know how you feel!
Here are some things that helped me:
1. Praying and reading the Bible and really just seeking God for who He is.
2. Singing hymns! 🙂 I love hymns, and I love singing! At the end of this, I will list some of my favorite hymns that helped me through my parent’s divorce.
3. Talking to our pastor. I met with him twice, and he was very helpful!
Remember that God is all-knowing, his love is unending, his plans are perfect, he works all things together for good to those who love Him, and he promises to be a Father to the fatherless.
As for why I believe in God….I really don’t see how any religion other than Christianity makes sense! I believe in God because I have seen His hand at work in my life providing for me, helping me, loving me, etc. My parents split finances a month or two ago and our finances were tight. We needed $400 dollars just to pay for propane!
Someone gave us $500 dollars anonymously, which was more than we needed for propane. That was just the beginning. We have seen God provide for us multiple times in different ways through gift cards, meals, cash, someone paying a bill for us, etc. We have had everything we needed! Was that just coincidence? No! It was the hand of God! I don’t need anything more than that to know that there is a God and that He is the God of the Bible!
Hymns that really helped me:
I Could Sing Of Your Love Forever, You Are So Good To Me, God Is Love, Your Love is Amazing, and The Solid Rock.
Here is a quote I really like:
“When you are down to nothing,
God is up to something.”
-Anonymous
Rest in your Heavenly Father. He knows your feelings and He LOVES YOU! Always remember that! Trust in God, my friend! He will take care of you! I know I’ve never met you before, but I say “my friend” because the Bible says that the believers are brothers and sisters in Christ. How are you in your walk with Christ and your belief in him now after so many comments and encouragements? I feel for you and pray for you everyday! I know this was long, but I hope it’s helpful!
Your sister in Christ,
Erin
First off, I want to say that saying something like this, even anonymously takes a lot of courage. And second, I am sorry that your parents are getting divorced, that would be hard for anybody.
I just want to tell you that staying true to what the Bible says, really can make a big difference in your life. The Bible can teach us more about God and his character. God controls everything in our lives, and everything he does has a reason, and a purpose. God tests us on earth as we prove to him that we are loyal followers in his word. God is the reason, and the way we exist. Without God, there would be nothing, and even if we existed without God, there would be no more purpose to us anymore.
God doesn’t want us to be hurting, but he also wants our faith to grow stronger so we can resist the enemy, and that is why he tests us here on earth. Along with that, God doesn’t want to force himself upon us. He wants us to have a choice if we will follow him or not. If he doesn’t give us a choice, what is the point? That love would not be true love if we were just forced to do it.
Just think about your life down the road. If you stick to God’s word, you will become a stronger person through him, and the hard experiences in your life. God wants to mold and shape us into becoming stronger believers in him. Think of the many blessings and opportunities that will come into your life, if you stick with the Lord.
Amen
9 If you declare with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. 10 For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you profess your faith and are saved.
I believe that Jesus is sitting at the right hand of God and coming to bring us to live with him. I didn’t grow up as a Christian, I didn’t even know who God really was until 7th grade when I came to a Christian school. I started to learn that through the hardest of times, Jesus was there for me, and he would take care of me. There are times in everyone life that they are tested. God will test your faith and ask you to stay strong. Even through all of the hard times you will still have God on your side, and he will not let you astray away from him so easily, like you said below, you kept reading your bible and started to notice that you were believing it again. God will watch over you and may have had you astray away and come back to tell your story to others and spread the gospel. Through all things God will be there, and he is more powerful than the devil so don’t give the devil the power when it isn’t his.
Proverbs 3:5-6
“Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths.”
I often turn to this verse during trying times. I am very sorry to hear of your current situation, and like said in earlier comments, the courage you are portraying by posting this is incredible. Everyone goes through tough times, and God can use these times to strengthen you as a person. It might even seem silly to believe in a God that you can’t see, but I believe the evidence of his existence is all around us (creation). In a situation like yours (or really anyone’s) a relationship with God is the only thing that can bring true joy. Like stated earlier, God uses these tough times to strengthen you. Although life may suck right now, God promises good times in your future.
Now to why I believe in God, and why I invite you to renew your relationship with him. As stated before, evidence of God is all around us. Only a designer could have created such a perfect and complex earth and ecosystem. There is no other way to explain it. Secondly, I am able to see him working in my own life. When i’m struggling with impurities in my life, I ask God to fill me with determination and purpose, and I just talk about my problems with him through prayer. I can say this is the best way for me to deal with my problems. God’s never failed to supply me with what I need to carry on, and I ask you to bring your problems to God through prayer. Open up your Bible and just ask for him to lead you to the write passages, and I can guarantee you He will listen and show you what you need. God is there for you, and I promise you he will bring joy in your life if you just open up your heart to him. Trust in God.
I came across this quote, and thought I would share it with you all.
“God’s commands are designed to guide you to life’s very best. You will not obey HIm, if you do not believe Him and trust Him. You cannot believe Him if you do not love Him. You cannot love HIm unless you know Him.” ~Henry Blackaby
I found it very inspirational, and pray that the Lord uses it draw you all closer to Himself. God bless!
Here is another reason to believe, look at all the comments below. So many people giving amazing reasons, and real reasons.
Hey i know this can be a hard time in your life. Sometimes these are just some tests that are thrown at you while living.
A good verse that I found is Revelation 2.
“To the angelof the church in Ephesus write: These are the words of him who holds the seven stars in his right hand and walks among the seven golden lampstands. 2 I know your deeds, your hard work and your perseverance. I know that you cannot tolerate wicked people, that you have tested those who claim to be apostles but are not, and have found them false. 3 You have persevered and have endured hardships for my name, and have not grown weary.
This is saying that God is watching you. You should persevere through this hard time. God will some day reward you for doing so.
Just remember that God loves you, and you are always strong in Him.
I know some times it might feel like it is blind faith, but it really isn’t. There is so much evidence for a Designer. Creation, in itself, shows design, and if there is design, there must be a Designer. Once this fact is established, you must believe something about a Creator so let’s look at different religions. The Bible is the only book with no mistakes or contradictions. It is historically accurate, and includes many prophecies that come true. Some have come true recently. This proves its accuracy.
Sometimes, yes it is hard to trust in something you can’t even see. But God knows about our struggles, and every thought and encourages us to cling to him through everything. Trials are promised when we are Christians, but James tells us of their importance. “Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance.” James 1:2-3
God promises us a reward that will last if we only stay with him. I will leave you with this verse to encourage you to simply ask God to draw you close to him. “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.” Matthew 7:7
Isaiah 55:6 is a great verse. It says “Seek the Lord while he is near; call upon him so that he will be found.” This verse is so great because when we are going through hard times all we need to do is call out to Him, and He will listen to our calls. Also Matthew 10 talks about how God takes care of the sparrows and flowers, and how meaningless those things are, if He will take care of those things how much more will he care for his children. The verse goes on to talk about how much more He loves us and will care for us, and carry us through hard times.
I am very sorry that you are going through this tough time in life. What I think is a great verse is Hosea 6:1, it says, “Come, let us return to the Lord For he has torn us, but he will heal us; He has wounded us, but He will bandage us.” It means sometimes the Lord will put us in bad situations and in depressing spots. But He will always help us out.
Sometimes we follow a religion because it’s expected of us and it becomes all that we know. There are many research articles that explain evolution and how everything is in cause and effect of each other etc. You’ve probably had far less exposure to these things though. This is not to say there isn’t a higher power, it’s just me suggesting that perhaps the higher power doesn’t have human characteristics and opinions and that prayer and sacrifice doesn’t always result in mother nature acting on your behalf. Jesus was a real person, a prophet who people thought to be closer to God than the common people. This was during a time when society leveled people according to how holy they were thought to be. In fact there were several prophets that were thought to be superior and people worshipped them and different religions grew from them. Mohammad was a prophet. Once you read into evolution more, take the time to read about early religion and how it was used to shape society. It will all make more sense.
I have noticed that most people have quoted the Bible to defend the validity of the Bible. However, it doesn’t work that way. One cannot simply say, “the Bible is God’s word because the Bible says it is God’s word.” All of the major religions have a holy text and all those holy texts claim to be the “right one”. But an author of a book cannot validate their claims by they themselves saying it is true. That validation has to come from elsewhere. In other words, to determine whether or not the Bible is true, you must look outside of the Bible. Don’t look for biblical quotes to verify the truth of biblical quotes.
You said “I know a lot about God and I know at least some of it is true.” Do you mind explaining a little more. Which parts of the Bible/Christianity/God do you find to be true and which parts do you find to not be true? And I challenge you to think about why you believe those particular things to be true/not true.
Also, something to think about is that most people accept the religion they are born into. The majority of people believe in the religion that their parents believed in. Their parents tend to believe the religion that the culture believes in. If you were born in Iraq you would be a Muslim and not a Christian. For most people, the answer to “why do you believe in God?” is “because my parents did.” That is why college is a challenge to people’s faith because it is the first time that they really are exploring religion for themselves and not just believing what their parents told them to believe about God/religion.
And second, our civilizations. In Genesis 1:28 God tells Adam “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it”. To subdue the earth means farming, building, colonizing, creating, inventing, researching, discovering, etc. It means creating beautiful works of art, constructing great empires, discovering Kepler’s Laws of Planetary Motion and Archimedes’ geometry and E=mc2. Without God’s standards we would be desperately foraging for our food and fighting to survive, just like the animals. After all, we are created in His image. Without His path to follow, there wouldn’t really be anything to follow. He created our math, set the planets into motion, set up our logic, and put in lace the thousands of natural laws named for discoverers like Newton and Kepler and Pythagoras and Einstein. I say discoverers. They didn’t make their discoveries; they found them. Proverbs 25;2 says “It is the glory of God to conceal a matter; to search out a matter is the glory of kings.”. He has hidden so many things in the woodwork of this universe; and He loves seeing us doing what He made us to do; namely, discovering His many secrets. We would have no reason to do that without God’s example.
Last but not least, He is seen everywhere in our past. I know what it’s like to go through hard times; you’re not alone. I personally have had a rough life. Luckily I have had a strong Christian family to get through it with….but it’s been rough. For example, my dad lost his job due to downsizing when I was younger,and could not find one for six years. However, that unemployment freed us up to move in with my great-grandfather to care for him in his last years. That was a spiritually significant time for my entire family; especially my dad, who was the main caretaker. Dad grew into a great, Christian man through that experience. After my grandfather died, we were able to move into a house owned by my paternal grandparents (the daughter and son-in-law of the grandfather we lived with) to repair the damage done by the previous tenants. While the needed repair was extensive, we gained a lot of invaluable experience about house care–and right when we finished, my dad got his current job. We moved into our current house, and all went well for a year…. until my athiest grandfather (my mom’s dad) committed suicide.That was two years ago. Now, we are seven months into my brother’s polio-like illness that has caused him to lose control of his legs and arm. That involves a lot of exhaustion and hard work for all of us. Now we are buying our first house to accommodate him; and we have a lot of experience with houses to help, thanks to our work on my grandparent’s rental three years ago. To be honest, right now it’s pretty hard. But I have been able to use my situation to reach out to countless people. My brother, Sebastian, (who is named for the patron saint of warriors and is definitely the strongest warrior in our family) is healing faster than anyone his doctors have seen with this illness; and he still has control of his head and left arm, which many patients lose as well. My grandfather’s death (which had a lot of far reaching consequences) has allowed me to reach out to some in my youth group who are dealing with loss. And, to be honest, I don’t know what all of this is for, but it’s preparing me for something. Hebrews 12:6 says “because the Lord disciplines the one he loves, and he chastens everyone he accepts as his son.” He must have something really big in store for me; and my situation is a wonderful opportunity to do hard things and strengthen my faith. And I know I’m not His only patient!
Everything that ever existed points to God. Everything. There is no scrap of evidence, whether historical, scientific, or otherwise, thst does not point to Him. And I’l put my trust in His wonderful, all-powerful redeeming grace.
I found that rough times can make me BITTER or BETTER. Believing in God its about seeking and finding answers and renewing strength and a lot about FORGIVENESS. Parents, friends and even husbands and wives can abandon us but God will not abandon us. NOTHING AND NO ONE IS ABLE TO SEPARATE US FROM THE LOVE OF GOD (Rom 8:38-39). We can doubt but we should not give up. In hard times I think about first verse in Bible.. “IN THE BEGINNING GOD… And I believe God is not angry with our weird questions and doubts. As the former atheist from divorced family I found after many decades that God is good to me and he can use me anyway. I am not teenager any more and I hope its not problem here…? I do not have all answers about evolution and creation and God but nobody can take from me my experience with Jesus and separate me from Him. And of course I would like to know how to answer to those who asked me about my faith but its not so easy sometimes. Faith in Christ Jesus can seems to be blind for many but its WORTHY TO LIVE AND DIE FOR. I face hard questions about my faith often. I hope it will help somebody what I mentioned here. And I apology for my English. It´s not my native language.
He gives me purpose and meaning. If it wasn’t for the hope and joy that God gives me, I would have killed myself because of depression. Without God, there is nothing to live for. To quote Ecclesiastes, when you focus on everything “under the sun”, “everything is meaningless”. But when you focus on the SON, there is purpose.
Could an alcoholic say everything you just said, but use the word alcohol instead of God?
Sorry about all the stuff you’re going through. I’ll just say this. You definitely do NOT need blind faith. There are 500 eyewitnesses to the resurrected Christ, historical records matching up with the Bible, chariot wheels under the Red Sea, and many more things. There are more records written about Jesus than there are for Alexander the Great or Caesar Augustus, but no one questions their existence. Falling in love with Christ does require a search for evidence. I went through one for the longest time. Just remember this, faith is not based off feelings. It is based off believing that something is true and planting your feet on that. God has changed my life. He can change yours too.
What is the only way that a chariot wheel could be under the Red Sea?
What would you say is the best evidence we have for God? What about evidence from other religions? What is the best evidence a Muslim would present? What is the best evidence a Jew would present? What is the best evidence a Hindu or Buddhist would present? What are your reasons for NOT believing in other God’s?
Why does one person love strawberry jam and another grape? To me it’s not a question of proving GOD is. Rather why do you believe GOD is? I offer to you my humble answer to this question: Because I choose to.
I need to clarify something. I’m not one to just bash people’s views but I felt like I should clear this up. It is not you who chooses God, it’s God who chooses you.
What made you choose the Christian God over the thousands of other gods? Did you taste all the jam or just one and decide it was your favorite?
We know who God is by the bible. I know this sounds like a simple explanation but it is not. God said to Moses ” i am who i am ” he is refering when Moses goes back to Egypt and they (the Egyptians) ask who sent him. The Bible is a book of books written by 20+ authors, try having 20 of your friends write a chapter of a book without knowing the previous chapter. The Bible could only be written by a Devine intervention, God himself. Sorry if i seem like I’m am criticizing you for you unbelief but i am not. I am a 14 year old boy from Florida, i am growing up in a Cristian home and i have have had my disbelief to but i went to this one camp over the summer and it changed my life (Youth For the Nations) before I went to that camp I felt like I was living a blind faith, but when i went there i felt God, it was just a subtle loving feeling and i just started crying. After I got prophesied on and this was a couple of years ago and she said I am a builder, A fighter, and A Godly man and this came true she explained my personality perfect within 5 seconds on knowing me. So stay strong in your faith this might be the devil coming after you remember this is a spiritual war, Remember God still loves you, there is still a place in Heaven for you i’ll pray for you.
Do you have any web links or books to which you base your claims on and which provide a more detailed history of the bible?
It seems a bit like you’re nagging John Chang.
Are you making this point to help Taylor answer John’s question or are you making this point to help Taylor avoid John’s question?
The 39 Clues is a collection of books written by 14 different authors and none of the books contradict each other, therefore, would it be correct to assume these books were divinely inspired?
39 Clues is a fiction ask the authors they will say fiction the Bible is fact Big gap there…
I think no. What do you mean by divinely inspired that it is from something otherworldly because if that’s the case in the Bible we have accounts of demons in people or they just planed the books really good I mend it can be done it’s fictional but with the Bible its historical which makes it much harder to “plan” out
I know God is real because he saved my life.. there was a dark time in my life when my mom overdosed on heroine and I started self harming and started on her path. God literally plucked me from my life at home and opened the doors for me to go to a program called Teen Challenge Kansas City. it was there that he showed me how he was always there with me and never left, he helped me know that I was not my mom and realize that I didn’t have to be.
Can you please elaborate on how God literally plucked you from your life at home?
If you’re really looking for proof try reading “Heaven is for Real.” It’s a short and easy book that describes a 100% true story of a child who went to heaven when he was close to death. I think there are many, many logical ways to explain why God is real, but in the end the most important thing to do is let him in your heart. You get out of your relationship with God what you put into it. For me, sometimes this just means talking to Jesus as if he were sitting right next to me. I also love reading specifically what Jesus said in the bible and listening to contemporary Christian music on my way to school. Every so often, a lyric or sentence will just resound profoundly in me, and I just start crying overcome by the Holy Spirit. But even then, faith is a never ending journey. Good luck and blessings to you.
What are the “many logical ways to explain why God is real” that you claim exist?
By that I meant a theology major could show you how the predictions made in the old testament that came true in the new testament, explain to you how prominent historians reference the bible more than any other text because of its reliability, and reference the millions of eye witness testaments of God. However, I am not a theology major, and that is not why I came to believe in God. For me, I had heard/read about enough life changing stories about people who came to God that I knew I had to at least consider the possibility that God was real. I decided to give God a chance myself, and he has never let me down. In my moments of greatest fear and greatest lapses of faith, he has held on to me and provided. I began writing some of my prayers and struggles in a journal every night, and it is amazing to look back to months before and see how God has answered all of my prayers in ways I had never thought of. For example, I met this girl 7 years ago who I always argued with about Christianity. She had tried reading the bible, but it did not resonate with her. I tried time and time again to explain to her why she needed God in her life, but every time I failed. I felt like I was letting her and God down. Eventually, we stopped talking about it. We became rather distant friends. I didn’t see her much, but I prayed for her often. Not everyday, but whenever I thought of her, and I would ask God to guide her to him. Yesterday, I was scrolling through Facebook and I saw a video of her pledging herself to the Muslim faith. She was crying in it, and I began to cry to, knowing that she had found God.
Faith is a very difficult journey. Personally, I am still trying to figure out exactly what I believe. Right now I have a very open mind, and I truly believe that God is guiding me to him. I have read the new testament, and I am reading the old testament, but I have also began to read the teachings of other people who have claimed to be prophets in history. In the Bahai faith, they believe that Moses, Jesus, Muhammad, and others were all prophets from God. I am not sure what I believe, but I know that figuring it out will be worth it. I hope this is helpful, and let me know if you have other questions!
so you don’t really believe that God is the christian god (trinity composed of father, jesus, holy ghost), but instead that he may be allah, jehovah, someone else, or a combination of concepts from different religions?
I don’t mean to criticize, berate or demean in any way, but I somewhat agree with John. I don’t know if this is just mis-,what’s the word for not knowing something? Whatever-that-is on your part, but I don’t believe Muslims and Christians worship the same god. Allah says in the Koran to kill the infidel. the Christian God says to love your enemy and pray for those who persecute you. I kind of understand what you’re saying, but it may help if you clarify.
Agreed. Although Islam and Christianity are both Abrahamic religions, we don’t worship the same God.
How do you know?
How come God picks a side in wars if he teaches that we should love our enemies?
Millions of people had a life changing experience after reading Harry Potter. Does this mean that Dumbaldore is real?
I love that book!
Can it be scientifically verified that the boy went to Heaven?
I would like to share a recent, small event in my life that has strengthened my belief in God.
Allow me to answer your question with my story 🙂
I know that God is real because He has spoken to me recently.
I have been going through some relationship struggles recently, both with my parents and my boyfriend. (The struggles with my parents are my causing, and I am working to improve these. The story is about my boyfriend.)
So many times I have asked God, “if You are good, then why do the people I love still mistreat me?”
I realize now that God has put me in this position to teach me a very important lesson.
Bad things happen to good people, the same way good things happen to bad people. God can speak to people like you and I, even when we are doubting his very existence.
After a particularly rough afternoon, I went on a walk to escape the trials of my family, and to get away from my troubling thoughts.
I felt that I needed to stop waiting for God to speak, and get into a position where I was willing to listen to Him. I had my doubts that my belief in Him was misplaced, but I decided to put my trust in Christ.
I prayed that God would show me what he wanted me to see as I was on my peaceful walk outside.
I came across a large, deformed tree that had been split down the middle. This was a tree that I had seen many times before, but I felt that God had led me here for a reason.
As I observed the tree, I realized that it had been cleaved down the middle by lightning in a violent desert storm.
The branches and trunk had fallen down on either side… but the tree continued to grow.
Although the tree had been separated from its other half, it was able to heal and thrive.
I felt that God was trying to tell me that I didn’t need to let my relationship with my boyfriend control my life.
People separate every day, but they are still able to carry on and continue a happy, healthy life.
I knew then that my prayers to God about my relationship had been answered.
I have suffered before, just as we all have.
I have lost people I love, and I have been plagued by my own demons, such as a time where I suffered from anxiety.
Every time I have fallen on hard times, I have questioned my faith and it’s validity.
But God has proven he does exist by answering my prayers in my times of trial.
After praying to God, I have improved my relationship with my parents, and my boyfriend.
I feel compassion for you and both of your parents. A divorce is very serious, but I know that things can and will get better.
My boyfriend comes from a broken family, but he loves his mother and father both very much.
Both have remarried, and both have extended their family with new children.
Although things are very different from the way they were, my boyfriend found happiness with both of his families.
It is stressful to have parents that are divorced, but losing faith in God will only make it more difficult for everyone.
Bad things happen to everyone, but in the end, you have to
1. Get into a position where you are still willing to listen to God, and
2. Choose to trust Him to lead you through the darkness, and mend your soul with His grace.
God is real. In the end, you must be the one to choose to believe. That is the simplest and most truthful answer anyone can give.
God says who he is. Gods the Almighty. God is the I Am.
How do you know that God is the I Am?
The Bible talks about God being the almighty one.
Can you please elaborate on what it means when it says God is the Almighty One?
In the Bible Exdous 6:3 talks about God being almighty. Look up Psalms 84:8. God exits because he is my everything and because he saved me. If you are doubtful about God ask him to show himself to you.
But can you please give me a concrete definition of what the Bible means when it says God is the Almighty One? In your own words, what does that mean?
God always keeps his promises. He is always faithful to us even in our bad times. God is our refuge in times of trouble too.
Do you mind sharing your thoughts on how that same definition you used for God the Almighty might also be used to describe Allah? “Allah always keeps his promises. Allah is always faithful to us even in our bad times. Allah is our refuge in times of trouble too.”
Allah is the word for Islam, Judaism, Jews and Christian. Islam
Use the word allah. Islam does not believe in God. They just use Allah.
You did not answer the question. You just talked about the word Allah. By the way, Islam is the religion practiced by muslims not islams. Why do you think that Muslim’s do not believe in God?
Therefore, Gods existence depends upon your thoughts about Him?
How can you validate your claims? Where did you get this information about what “God” says he is?
From the Bible. Exodus 3:11-15. Genesis 17:1
So the Bible says that God exists. And why is the bible true? Because it is God’s word. And how do you know that God exists? Because the bible says so. And why is the bible true? because it is God’s word.
CIRCULAR REASONING.
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unsubscribe from what?
Yeah I agree with you. God word is always true.
that’s not what I said. What i said is that your contention that the bible is true and that god exists…is based on faulty circular reasoning.
While I do believe the Bible is the infallible Word of God inspired by God himself, I wouldn’t say that that’s why I believe in him. I believe in him because he is my Lord and Savior who created me and saved me from an eternity of death. I live in a Christian home that hasn’t always been how it is now, but as long as I can remember my siblings and I have been around some influence of Christianity. Despite this I only actually embraced it in my preteen years. I’m home schooled and don’t have much experience with worldly issues. But with what knowledge I do have, and the testimonies and stories of others, I can tell you that God has an ultimate purpose for everything. Which, in my opinion, should be stressed as much as the main portion of the Gospel (though I do believe that is part of the Gospel.)
To what extent does a persons belief in God depend upon their parents religion?
I say I believe him not because the Bible is infallible because, like John Chang said, saying “The Bible is complete truth/because God says it is/God exists because the bible says so” is circular reasoning that can’t prove any argument. If you do want some TECHNICAL proof, though, there are too many arguments for God’s existence to list here. But in short, it’s the reason many, many early scientists were Christians: Because they looked around and saw that none of what they were studying could possibly come into existence on its own.
Well said
So the best reason to believe in God is that there are some mysteries that science cannot explain?
Addressing your situation, however, I really don’t think it’s my place to speak, since I have never been in a rough spiritual trial like that before. All I can say is that I’ll be praying, and refer you to the book of Job, who lost everything, his servants, his wealth, his children, even his health, and even in the midst of it, he never spoke a word against God, and in the end realized that God’s ultimate purpose prevails.
Who caused Job to go through all his suffering, God or Satan?
That is an interesting question; while Satan was directly responsible for the suffering, God was indirectly responsible for giving Satan room to cause it.
I’m really not quite sure where I fall on that. Where do you?
In a way, it does require blind faith; the blindness of not knowing what God’s doing or where he is, but knowing that it will all come together in the end.
I’m sorry you’re going through this. But I believe in God because of His astounding forgiveness. I am far past the point of deserving forgiveness (especially with my particular struggle, fits of rage), but God still forgives me. We could also look at this from a pragmatic perspective: would you rather have to work for your salvation? Or if you’re Atheistic would you take a blind leap into eternity or have nothing to guide you in all this madness?
I cling to the truths I’ve been given because it is a conviction. It is what God himself has done in my life. Nothing and no one can change that.
If then you were alive during the Old Testsment times when Gods forgiveness was not as great as it is now, would you still believe in God?
God’s forgiveness moved David, an adulterer, to tears. God’s steadfast love brought Abraham to his knees. It still amazes me to this day. God’s forgiveness has always been powerful. So yes.
How do you know that David was brought to tears due to God’s forgiveness?
I read his psalms, which are poetic songs. He portrays immense emotion, feelings of despair, of love, of hope… David sings these amazingly raw lyrics about what is going on in his life. Megan, You might try reading Psalm 51. It’s my favorite, and Jesus quoted it too! By the way, I was a devoted agnostic and I understand how hard it is to read the Bible when you hate Christianity. But I hope that, for the sake of genuine discussion, you will actually read the few verses I mention. Just google them! 🙂
Would you mind explaining why you no longer put yourself in the agnostic category?
I would happily do that as soon as we’ve found some common ground, besides the fact that we both speak English (though that has proved remarkably helpful so far.) Have you read the Harry Potter series? Do you play an instrument? I play piano. Do you have a favorite football team? A favorite color? I think Bertrand Russell and the Apostle Paul would agree that we must be in agreement over SOMETHING for worthwhile dialogue to take place.
I have only read the first Harry Potter book. I do not play an instrument but my favorite to listen to is the piano. I do not enjoy football. My favorite color is purple. But what you seem to be looking for are shared interests not common ground. We both agree that racism is wrong and Hitler was a bad person. Now that we have SOMETHING that we agree upon we can move on with the conversation.
Thank you so much! The Philosopher’s Stone is pretty good and purple is a pretty good color. So, you were asking why I became a Christian and ceased to be agnostic. Well, there are way too many details to include in the comments section. Let me mention a few of them.
I don’t need several reasons. Just give me your best one.
What are your thoughts if I modify your statements slightly to read as follows: “Beer moved David, an adulterer, to tears. Beer brought Abraham to his knees. Beer still amazes me to this day. Beer has always been powerful. So, at least for me, yes.”
Easy. That’s a classic red herring. Megan, you can do better than that!
I made a logical statement. Beer can satisfy everything you stated just as well as God could. Therefore, it is up to you to defend your statement to explain why God is the most logical cause of Abraham falling to his knees. What is more likely to have done that, beer or God?
I saw a terrible car crash the other day. One car was burned almost beyond recognition. Beer caused that. Addictions don’t cause people to forgive when their own lives are on the line, serve those under them, or form a solid, happy family. God is a better explanation for people who do good things when it goes against all their instincts, like David and Abraham.
I did not ask what is a better explanation for people who do good things. I asked which is more likely to have caused a person to fall on their knees. Can you please answer the question. Also, why do you believe the car crash was caused by beer?
I talked to the police man… And I was using metaphors. What I was trying to say was that they were moved by grace. It changed their lives.
Megan, I only argue with my friends. A shared interest is the best grounds for friendship. Please, help me find common ground.
You like to play piano and my favorite instrument to listen to is the piano. That is a common interest but you are for some reason pretending that it is not (I assume you are doing that to avoid having a conversation). If you do not want to have a conversation just say so. Can you please answer my question which you still did not do? Which is more likely to cause Abraham to fall to his knees, God or beer?
It was a metaphor. If you want to discuss people falling to their knees, we could list any number of reasons: arthritis, broken knees, old age, aliens… jk! But, if you want to talk about God, I think we should start in a more appropriate place. What’s your biggest question or concern about what I believe? What do you believe?
Metaphor or not, you still did not answer the question. Answer my question first then I will answer yours in full (I will answer without dodging around and holding you hostage until you tell me that you enjoy Tacos). Which is more likely to cause someone to fall to their knees, God or beer?
In a physical sense, beer could potentially bring you to your knees. The kneeling I’m referring to is a sign of submission and praise. I never tried to prove God’s existence from bad knees. If you want to understand Christianity, I recommend starting with C.S. Lewis and Lee Strobel. I imagine you would have to be pretty lucky to find the big answers on social media like this. I would be happy to tell you the reasons I am a Christian, but I’m not interested in arguing about them online. Thanks for understanding.
But you still did not answer the question. Which is more likely to cause someone to fall to their knees, God or beer?
Metaphor or not, you still did not answer my question. Please answer my question and then I will answer yours. Which is more likely to cause someone to fall to their knees, God or beer?
And it’s really confusing to talk on multiple threads. Could we stick to this one?
This website is composed of multiple threads. It is unavoidable that its users will converse across several of them. But the Disqus program organizes all of that for its users so they don’t have to try and sort through all the threads on their own.
Ok
My uncle is an addict his life is in shambles. His 13 year old daughter is heartbroken his girlfriend has left him he is falling apart. That is what beer does. That is what drugs do. They do not help. Chaos does not make order.
Wow. How powerful. That happened to me a couple years ago as well. I think that was the first time I really truly became a Christian.
That’s pretty cool, Joye!
I believe in God…for many many reasons first I will tell you something people ask is where was God when This happened or this happened? I have asked questions like that “Where was God when my father chose to leave me fatherless?” “Where was God when my Grandfather died unsaved?” “Where was God when I got ripped away from everyone I knew to live on the other side of America with only strangers?” I will ask you this now do you ask where God is when everything I going smooth? Do we praise him when It is all sunshine? We don’t want God we want to be God. We are perfectly okay with disobeying him and ignoring him until he does something we don’t like… I could be bitter about my rough past… I could shake my fist at his choices… or I could open my eyes and understand that even though I don’t know why God has a plan and it is working out for my good… I understand where your coming from… My family fell apart when I was 4 years old… My grandfather died recently… and not even one month ago I was torn from everyone I know and dropped here far away where I know no one… God is good… God is God he can do what he likes even when It rips our hearts… keep trusting keep believing he is with you through the fire and will be with you through the flood… Read you bible and know he is God! I will pray for you… I know not your name but God does and he thought you feel alone is with you…
I found your answer confusing. Can you please summarize this for me in one short sentence that explains why you believe in God?
God is just. God is good. He is there even when it hurts.
What are your thoughts on this statement “God created us sick and commanded us to get well.”?
HI, Megan!
I can’t say I have ever heard that statement, but I am happy to take a stab at it 😄
God didn’t create us sick, he created us perfect. Unfortunately we took the free will he gave us and chose to disobey his command (back in Eden, when Adam and Eve ate the fruit). Because of that, we infected ourselves with this illness called sin.
God also doesn’t command us to get well. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. The bible states multiple times that we are saved through faith in Jesus alone and by his grace. (Poor sentence structure, I know). God knows we have no cure and so he provided one through the blood of Jesus.
On these grounds, I would dare to say that there is no viable truth within that statement. It is based on misconceptions and, in my opinion, is totally false.
Does that answer your query? If not, I’m happy to discuss further 😊
If babies are not created sick (and by sick I mean being effected by the effects of sins curse) then why do they die?
I cannot pinpoint the moment that I first believed in God, and now, I suppose I believe in God because I can feel his guidance in my day to day life. This feeling ebbs and flows though I find that I can only sense it when I can still my thoughts, which is difficult when everything feels like it’s going wrong.
I don’t feel like I’m in a place to offer advice, but I would recommend C.S. Lewis’s book Mere Christianity. The book originally was a series of talks on BBC Radio the author made during WWII when the outlook for Britons was bleak. He creates a very elegant argument that God and Christianity logically follow from our own human experiences.
I believe in God because He captured my attention. Look around you, look at this world. We are a sinful people captured by ourselves and by what worldly things we can get. Even other religions are not about the things the people are worshiping-they are about the people worshiping it. It’s about how good they can be or what they have to do to earn the benefits. Christianity is not like that. Christianity is the faith of a God that is bigger than anything we could ever dream of. The bible says this- “we love because He first loved us” (1 John 4:19). I am nothing from God, it’s really that simple. Apart from God, I can do nothing. The bible says that “every knee shall bow and every tongue shall confess to God”. There is going to be a moment for every human here on this earth where you will come face to face with the living God and you will bow down in submission-this can be a joyful reunion with the King of your life, the Creator of the Universe, your Father-or it can be the moment where God turns His face away from you.
WHY WAIT UNTIL THEN TO BOW DOWN TO GOD???
You can start now! Pray! Open your mouth and cry out to God, acknowledging that He is Lord of all, and asking Him to forgive you. Dedicate your life to Him! And His mercy is limitless, His love endures forever.
I know God is real because my Spirit cries out for Him. My inner being delights in Him and in His law. I know God is real because I could never have this faith or have kept it so long without some kind of supernatural force behind it. I trust in God because I know He knows everything. There’s going to be trials in this life-but its nothing compared to the joy His children will have on the day of our Lord.
There is a moment where God shows himself to you and gives you the understanding. Its something that I can’t explain but I’ve seen his touch. I’ve thought of suicide and the only thought that kept me alive was because I know how much hope God offers to me and life. He’s been everything to me. When I was bullied, hurt, alone, suffering, he was there when I didn’t have anyone else. I believe in God because He is my all in all.
Hello. I’m gonna share my insight of why I still believe in God when I haven’t see Him for real.
Though, in times it is hard to believe of something invisible and might be indefinite, God has the power to reinforce His existence in many ways. I am able to feel Him in the hardest point of my life. Have you ever felt that thing when you are all alone and feeling unloved, where you chose to read the Bible and there is that mysterious presence that seems to hug you genuinely? Well, I am not talking about ghost because if it is ghost I might not fell the authentic feeling. Well, you might believed in the saying, “to see is to believe”; but it is just overwhelming to have the faith to believe in God even without seeing Him. Time may come that you might experience what Saul had experienced (though not that harsh), but I know God is still building your character.
Faith is proof that God exists. Faith is God given, not something that we conjure up ourselves. Maybe I haven’t seen God Himself, but there is physical proof that goes with the abstract . Look at the Dead Sea Scrolls, The Pool of Siloam, the Caiaphas Ossuary. Then there’s faith, and the indescribable peace and reassurance that you receive once you are saved. And, God is working in you already. Why ask your question if you don’t think that you will get real answers. God is calling you. All you have to do is respond.
I hope this helped, and I’m praying for you (=.
Hope this poem by RUMI will help you 🙂
Didn’t I tell you
Do not leave me for I am your only Friend,
I am the spring of life.
Even if you leave in anger for thousands of years
You will come back to me for I am your goal and your end.
Didn’t I tell you
not to be seduced by this colorful world
for I am the Ultimate Painter.
Didn’t I tell you
you are a fish do not go to dry land
for I am the deep Sea.
Didn’t I tell you
not to fall in the net like birds
for I am your wings and the power of light.
Didn’t I tell you
not to let them change your mind and turn you to ice
for I am your fire and warmth.
Didn’t I tell you
they will corrupt you and make you forget
that I am the Spring of all virtues.
Didn’t I tell you
not to question my actions
for everything falls into order, I am the Creator.
Didn’t I tell you
your heart can guide you home
because it knows that I am your Master.
https://universalspirituality.blog/
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9d684268d72b8421e6dc971cbba0b7d6ebc7f02fc18f4d3c17dadefd5ec27223.jpg
No christian actually “believes” in any “god”…they “believe” in a book. There is no evidence for any “god” past or present..they are all the product of the human imagination and their attempt to give meaning to the things they observed in the universe. If any of you actually did some research you would understand that as tribal family centered groups there is no record of any “gods” It was only when agriculture took hold and people could gather in unrelated groups did the concept of a god evolve. Try to find an emperor, king, dictator etc who didn’t use “god” as justification for his control over a large group of people.
God is more than just a book; He’s an actual thing that billions of people have experienced. Search up “Christian Testimonials” and you’ll see the evidence that God is real. I’ve personally seen people who are sick become healed with the name of Jesus- my own fractured foot healed in less than 2 weeks!! God is also someone you can feel and have a relationship with, if only you’ll give Him the chance. He gave us free will, because a relationship shouldn’t be forced.
Did you know that the “book” that Christians believe in, is actually historical evidence and manuscripts all put together?? Science can’t even prove all the prophecies and wrong, because they all have happened and rounded out to one person- Jesus.
If you give God a chance–pray, talk to Him– I can guarantee you will have a revelation. And- if you ask Jesus to be the Lord of your life, I can also guarantee a change in your life, if only, ONLY, you will allow God to do so.
You can’t be serious.
Ever see your “god” heal an amputee? Why would your “god” heal your boo boo foot but let millions of children die each year of horrible causes?
Millions of people believed in all the Greek and Roman “gods” A billion “believe” in Krishna and Allah
“Feelings” are not evidence. You cannot have a “relationship” with something that doesn’t exist except in your head, if you’re a psychotic living in the subway or 3 years old with an invisible friend
There are no “prophecies” The new book was written using the old…hello? That’s not predicting the future that’s writing whatever you need to to validate the stupidity of those that wrote nonsense before you
Oh so if I believe then I’ll get the evidence huh? Think about what you just wrote…it’s absurd and infantile
I wage tireless warfare against all delusional religious death cults that infect the impressionable minds of children like yourself. Your religion is a pox on the world…a virus that infects minds at the most basic fundamental level. I won’t stand idly by while your sick superstitious elders destroy your young lives with Bronze Age nonsense
They are the same things because they are demonstrably true!
I never said any such thing.
There is no evidence for any of the 10,000 man made “gods” so I believe in none of them
Only the fearful, ignorant, gullible and socially indoctrinated “believe” in the superstitious and that which cannot be demonstrated to be true
No I don’t “slip up”
If I ever said anything in that context it was sarcasm
PS…you’re not going anywhere…no one is. Made up make believe nonsense to ease the fear of death…entirely make believe
No, not perfect. I only speak when I know what I’m talking about. I do my homework.
Where were you before you were born?
Exactly and that’s the state you’ll return to someday.
Prove that your claim is true. Prove it. I don’t care about your fuzzy feelings or someone elses opinion…prove it since you claim it as a truth
Been to many…they are all ridiculous filled with gullible fools and terrified old people
Don’t care….I don’t mix well with superstitious stupid gullible people…I found them all below my intelligence, dull, boring and ignorant…I care about what is TRUE not what “feels good”
A bunch of goofy people waving their hands in the air like possessed idiots….stupid small talk over donuts….women showing off their clothing….preachers lying to children
Ever been to a Buddhist temple? A Mosque? A Shinto Shrine…I think you’ll find the atmosphere similar…funny that huh?
Nope…they creep me out…There was a song they sang which I wrote different lyrics to
The song was “my god is an awesome god”
Well I had a German Shepard dog (that’s god spelled backwards) and I wrote and sang
My dog is an awesome dog
He’s sent from heaven above
His bite is the bite of love
My dog is an awesome dog
hahahahhaha!
Won’t listen…they are all stupid crap for idiots
Nope…will never set foot in any indoctrination center again….it’s sick, twisted, destructive and a lie.
All xtian music is slop nonsense ridiculous gibberish for idiots
A building full of stupid people singing praises to an invisible make believe deity with a giant Iron Age torture device showing a guy nailed to it….it’s SICK! And these people adore it and bring their kids? CHILD ABUSE! It’s a death cult…it’s sick
Doesn’t matter you revere human sacrifice, death, suffering and your little chapels are just as creepy and full of stupid people babbling nonsense.
Catholics are the original “christian” just so you know
You are all deranged equally in your own delusional way
You really know next to nothing. The “catholic” church was THE ONLY christian cult from the day it was made the OFFICIAL church of the Roman Empire by decree of Constantine. It was THE ONLY christian cult up until the Reformation by the lunatic Martin Luther centuries later.
You would do yourself a great service to do some homework before you flap your gums
On another note….WATCH THIS…then tell me on thing that’s wrong with it…I dare you
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vlEY25jSiBM
Stupid nonsense for the gullible dim wits
Prove any “god” “authored humanity”….come on
He may or may not be intelligent but there are many intelligent superstitious delusional idiots
I don’t need to “do it again”….evolution is a process of change that goes on within species ALL THE TIME. It didn’t happen it is happening all the time!
Just shows that you haven’t the foggiest clue what you’re babbling about
Evolution is a FACT…a demonstrable FACT
Also….Evolution has NOTHING to do with the existence of any “god” or not….another stupid christian false claim.
Catholics accept evolution and a make believe “god” see? The two things have NOTHING to do with one another
Now either engage me intelligently or have a nice delusional day with “jesus”
I take them all on
I don’t “hate” anyone but I do detest and have nothing but contempt for your wicked ideology that exists by lying to children
Can you not read? I don’t “hate” anyone
I have contempt for your warped and delusional ideology. I pity you and shame your parents and pastor and everyone who filled your head with this absurd mythology pretending to know things they cannot know
He is one of the most well spoken intelligent people on the internet. Do you always judge books by their covers? I challenge you to watch it and point out a single thing that he is wrong about….try…don’t be a coward..you won’t bust into flames
There is no “trust” required. You listen to the man about why you “believe” what you “believe” and you either think about it and admit that he makes sense or you don’t. It’s information and all information is good
LOL! I’m not asking anyone to follow me and I have no “teachings” I’m asking you to THINK! To not accept baseless claims and an absurd ancient book! THINK!! Be rational! Care more about what is demonstrably true than what stupid people BELIEVE!
I care that the world functions using REASON not MYTH and SUPERSTITION. We’ve been there and it wasn’t pretty
The dark ages, the middles ages, the bronze age when “christians” burned witches and cut out the tongues of blasphemers…when disease was caused by demons not germs…That’s what religion would have the world be today were it not for the Age of Reason and science
Yes they were! They were puritans in Boston! and Scotland!
I’m tired now….you don’t care what’s real
I wrote to you on this..moderator deleted it
Google the fossil record of the horse, whale or human…you will see a nearly complete unbroken line of evidence showing the vast incremental change over time that even you could not deny…..
The genetic evidence showing the genetic relationship between all living things…undeniable and uncontested
Please….There are MILLIONS of fossils discovered and studied by thousands of scientists over 200 years in hundreds of labs and museums….is everyone of them in on some conspiracy? come on now….ANYONE who proved it all a fake would be the most famous person on earth for doing so.
NO! The people who tried to perpetrate a fraud were shown to be frauds by the actual scientists doing the real work!
You have been fed so much disinformation…it’s really sad
NO! There were a couple of men who tried to pass off something as genuine…the science proved that they were frauds! There are no fake fossils and there are millions and millions of them. What a shame you’ve been so corrupted and doomed to ignorance and superstition. All those people that have lied to you are guilty of child abuse
Nothing…I taught my sons HOW to think not WHAT to think…they’ve always been free to seek anything without restriction
I can tell you with near 100% certainty that this would never happen. My sons are very very intelligent.
However in that most unlikely case I would NOT be ok with it but I would love them no less either
I wouldn’t do anything except try to reason with them and show why they are victims of a psychological disease spread by an apocalyptic death cult
When my sons were little they had hope that Santa Claus would bring them a new bike. I cared more for the TRUTH then perpetuating false hope in an invisible being like Santa Claus so I “took away their hope” in make believe….didn’t seem to harm them. I would assume you losing your “hope” in Santa Claus wasn’t devastating to you? Only difference between my sons and you is that you substituted one make believe story for another.
They weren’t devastated when they found out Santa wasn’t real. Or the easter bunny. They matured and moved on. I taught them to think critically and rationally and NOT simply “believe” what they are fed by know nothing others.
They don’t “believe” in Bigfoot, alien abductions, crop circles, talking donkeys, the incest of noah and his clan, mythical heavens and hells, the lost city of atlantis, ghosts or the loch ness monster.
They are none the less for not “believing” that which has no evidence.
I would ask him to demonstrate the existence of any such “jesus” or “god” and prove that such an invisible make believe entity could and actually did “change his life” Same as I would if he joined any other destructive brain robbing cult
Hahahhahahha!! How did Thursday come to be? It’s named after the god Thor! So does Thor exist?
Oh really? The “logic” is exactly the same.If a day of the week is named after a god then by your limited reasoning ability there MUST have been a real god by that name!
You’re irrational and delusional
Funny that you would find an invisible man living at the north pole with talking reindeer and a magical sleigh would be silly but you buy into the nonsense of talking snakes, talking donkeys, invisible realms and holy ghosts.
Telling the truth is ALWAYS better than telling a made up story. ALWAYS
My sons deal with reality not make believe regardless of what “feels good”
Everyone could get a lobotomy in your world and they would never worry or fret about anything would they? Is that better than dealing with the universe the way it is? Religion is a form of lobotomy
Oh..christian but not religious…funny
LOL….do you worship a deity? Do you belong to a group of people with a similar ideology all worshiping a deity? Then you are a religion.
Who fills your head with this rubbish?
Gibberish….you can have a “relationship” with a dog, a person even a cat but you cannot have a “relationship” with something that doesn’t exist, doesn’t interact with the material world and cannot be shown to be causal IE: does something.
Only 3 year olds and psychotics on the subway have invisible friends whom they talk to as if they were really there
Oh no…Krishna created us! Buddah created all things! The Earth rides on the backs of two giant turtles! The Great Spirit created coyote who made the rivers run!
They did it!! Someone said it so it must be so!!
See how ridiculous you are with your constant claims and unsupported assertions that never end?
I don’t read absurd apologetic rubbish designed to appeal to those already caught up in the cult…There is NO evidence whatsoever for any “jesus” ever existing….NONE. No eyewitness accounts, no artifacts, no tomb, no historical documents, nothing written by this character…NOTHING!
I don’t do make believe and I don’t read books about alien abduction written for those who “believe” in alien abduction
Why do you resist demonstrating what’s true?
Tell me exactly how you KNOW something is true or untrue…
Answer this question only and we’ll go from there
Eyewitness accounts are flimsy evidence at best. Ask any 10 people to recount their version of a car wreck and you’ll get 10 similar but different accounts
There ARE NO EYEWITNESS ACCOUNTS of any “jesus’ at all….absolutely NONE. or of any of the other nonsense in your make believe book. NONE…it is a story! Written long long after the supposed events
We arrive as what is true by testing. We propose something to be true and then design tests to prove that it so or not.
There are NO tests for ANY religious story from ANY faith whatsoever
Give a name of a single eyewitness
Name the actual authors of the books of the new testament and prove that they are the authors…..google when they were written and get back to me
They are all take offs on mark….sometimes direct copies and paste
They are STORIES….donkeys don’t talk, there was no global flood, men cannot live in fish….grow up now
Do some actual research
Objective unbiased analysis.
Tell me the actual names of the authors of the new testament gospels.
Tell me when they were written and then tell me if there were any eyewitnesses to anything from the garden of eden to jesus and the tomb
I can save you the time….no one knows who wrote them and everyone…everyone admits they were NOT eyewitness accounts. This includes EVERY biblical scholar on the planet whether a “believer” or not
Lying is a sin no? I didn’t say that.
I said I would discard anything you post as evidence that lacks DATA to back it up. You can’t ask your neighbor who’s not a biblical scholar and expect me to accept that!
Provide the names and the dates and proof of eyewitnesses and back it up with data…..you wouldn’t buy a car from a used car salesman just on his word would you? You would want to read consumer reports that give objective data to back up claims
So just do the same don’t weasel out now
Then tell me who wrote the 4 books of the gospel, when they were written and then admit that there were no eye witnesses to anything as you claimed as evidence to be “believed”
Sure…ban the blasphemer! Burn him! Only entertain opinions that agree with your own! Who needs critical thinking when we all pretend together!
So you’re saying that even if you find out for yourself you still will willingly stay in denial? That’s sad
Rational people do not “believe” anything! They accept certain propositions based upon the strength of evidence and modify the degree of their acceptance as new evidence is brought forth….There is NO evidence for “jesus” NONE!
I keep asking you to provide it and you never do….rather pointless tap dancing with you if you’re not really interested in the truth
Pretty sick if that’s all your eternal “god” has for an agenda. And you still haven’t demonstrated that ANY “god” exists or ever existed..
Now you still haven’t answered the question…you just evade…who wrote the books and when? Prove that any “eyewitnesses” existed and were credible…still waiting
I’m not going to play these silly games with you…answer my questions or good bye..
Who wrote the 4 gospels…..when….name any eyewitnesses and how you know they actually were and were credible
This is what we will discuss
We are not drifting off topic
Your feet are to the fire now
Answer or good bye
Wrong…Harry Potter has hundreds of references to Harry Potter too….The bible is not evidence for itself!
It is NOT evidence what someone wrote 200 years after the fact…that is HEARSAY!
Historians ONLY mentioned “christians” not “christ” and there were plenty of them roaming around at the time
If that’s all you got it’s pretty damn weak!!
Although some scholars disagree, the vast majority of researchers believe that Mark was the first Gospel to be written, sometime around the year 70. This scholarly consensus holds that the Gospel of Matthew and the Gospel of Luke were composed, independently of one another, sometime in the 80s or 90s.Dec 13, 2016
The Dating of the Gospels – Boston College
That is what hundreds of years of scholarship says …that’s the best any of us has to go on. You can make up anything you want and believe anything you like but RATIONAL people subscribe to what the experts SHOW until SHOWN otherwise
The buybull is just words..men’s flimsy words..how do you know they’re true?
Prove it!
Is the Koran Allahs highly reliable words? Is the Bagvada Gita Krishnas highly reliable words?
How would you know?
NONE of that points to ANY “god” They are ALL arguments from ignorance. You can’t explain something therefore some “god” did it….It is the most basic fallacy apologists make.
The universe is amazing!
Does the “god” make storms? People used to think so until we understood weather!
Does the “god” make thunder? People used to think so until we undersood lightening
Does the “god” get angry when a volcano erupts? People used to think so until we understood geology
ETC ETC ETC
More stupid CLAIMS! PROVE IT!! Prove that “god” does anything! You can’t just assert krap!
Volcanos erupt without any “god”….Does Pele exist?
Don’t be so ridiculous when I know you know better
LOL!! For the last time….he was not witness to anything! He wrote about the early christian cults! That’s it. Full Stop. Testifying about the convicition of the cult members IS NOT evidence about the person “jesus” actually existing at all!
No he wrote what early christians believed! He witnessed nothing! The Romans crucified lots of trouble makers
Crucifiction was reserved for those who the Romans considered traitors, rabble rousers and trouble makers…FACT
NO…it’s a STORY! About one of many delusional cult leaders at the time preaching end times nonsense. There is NO evidence for his existence…you are still losing this debate and now you’re wasting my time
” One historian suggests that Tacitus is here “bearing indirect … testimony to the conviction of the early church”
Can you not read or comprehend?
I’ll pick one of these stupid arguments to destroy all of them
The “moon” is NOT the perfect distance from the earth. It was once much much closer and revolved around the earth much much faster! It is receding away from us and we can MEASURE the rate!
It is NOT static, it is drifting away! In the far off future it will be so far away the tides will be nothing like they are today and radically different then they were in the past
I can destroy every one of these silly infantile arguments just as easily as this
No it isn’t….it’s just another argument from ignorance or an argument from incredulity…you don’t know about it, can’t explain it yet therefore an invisible “god” did it…which can’t be shown and explains NOTHING
Well that just proves one thing….You’re a very stupid indoctrinated young lady who doesn’t give a damn about truth, reality, honesty or reality….You simply want to “believe” what you want to “believe” no matter what evidence is put right under your nose. You are a cult member…and indoctrinated non critically thinking drone….I think we’re done now….I pity you and curse those who did this to you
Give me some evidence that purple pixies DON’T live on the far side of the universe…
See? You can’t even recognize how stupid a statement you just made is
No one can PROVE A NEGATIVE. It is incumbent on the one making the positive claim to support his claim!
I’ve challenged him 100 times to an open debate…he refuses. He’s terrified. Why don’t you suggest it to him
He reads them…I’m quite sure of that. You’re right..he does know my arguments and knows he would leave any debate in disgrace and humiliation
Ask him then…I would gut him like a fish for all to see. He is totally delusional…he’s a lunatic…demons! devils! sin! repent or else!! He’s a nutbag who makes his wretched living lying to children
Actually I can…Can any “god” be “measured” or “detected”?
Yes or no? If something is undetectable then it is exactly the same as non existent
Show me an experiment that can measure or detect a “god”
That’s correct so how stupid and gullible does one have to be to “believe” in ANYTHING that can simply be written off as undetectable supernatural? LOL Do you “believe” in ghosts? Talking to the dead? The “paranormal”?
There ya go! You “believe” in a BOOK! A stupid, false, provably wrong on everything BOOK! An ancient BOOK written by men you know nothing about who had visions and knew NOTHING about how the universe works! Superstitious stupid MEN wrote a BOOK and that’s what you actually “believe” You “believe” that men live in fish, that a global flood happened, that donkeys talk…because it’s written in a BOOK! A BOOK that you’ve been conned into accepting without ANY critical thought!
I think we’ve covered it all here…have a nice night
Go PATS!
Neither am I although probably not for the reasons you are.
Football is a sport…it is not a place to preach nationalism or parade the military as propaganda. The “kneeling” thing was totally out of place. They don’t pull that krap in golf! It should be a contest of athletes not a forum for players political beliefs or social commentary.
There shouldn’t be any anthem played or flag waved…it’s a game! A sport not a forum for political ideology, military recruitment or nationalism.
I wasn’t very happy with all of that nonsense either
I am a human being on planet earth. Nationalism is nothing but divisive and destructive. Tribalism is responsible for more wars and suffering than any human folly. Tell me what an “american” is? You can’t because it isn’t anything and it isn’t better than any other human from any other country
No such thing as any “american spirit” People are the same everywhere…they all have the same hopes and dreams and love their children the same.
Is Norway awesome? Is Switzerland and Australia awesome? Are the people in Kenya less than the people in america?
Show one “lie” I’ve ever told. You are a naive’ uneducated child….you babble nonsense, believe nonsense, cannot critically think and know next to nothing of the world or reality
You’re a silly know nothing brainwashed little girl acting grown up by waving a flag and a buybull.
We proclaimed a dream of an America that would be a Shining City on a Hill.
—President Ronald Reagan, 1984
I believe in American exceptionalism with every fiber of my being.
—President Barack Obama, 2014
It has become obligatory. To be taken seriously in American politics, one must kneel before the altar of “American exceptionalism”—the messianic notion that the United States is a constant source for good in the world with a unique mission to spread its particular values.
At times, this manifests itself in absurdist minutiae, such as then-presidential candidate Barack Obama sparking controversy when he was seen without the requisite American flag pin on the lapel of his suit jacket. Gasp. Lambasted in the press for this unpatriotic symbolic gaffe, Obama soon sported the compulsory pin. He sported it safely through the presidency.
Both major political parties have long since reached a consensus of sorts on extolling America’s messianic global mission. To even question the contours of that crusade—despite 17 years of failing military quagmires—is to commit political suicide and be relegated to the margins of public life.
For once, the mainstream politicians might be right. A rigorous look at the United States of 2018 (or 2002, or 1850, for that matter) indicates that America may well be exceptional—only not in the ways most of its citizens think. On many issues and several levels, America’s culture of militarism (both at home and abroad) stands out as the unique dark side of the exceptionalist project. We are, in fact, extraordinary among the family of nations. Unfortunately, that which makes us exceptional is the dogged militarism that consistently brands the U.S. as an international pariah.
Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised when regular global polling indicates that a large percentage of the earth’s population considers the United States the greatest threat to world peace. After all, ours was a nation founded—in part—by religious zealots obsessed with creating a New Jerusalem in North America (native inhabitants be damned). In fact, one could plausibly argue that America’s two key founding proclivities were “city on a hill” exceptionalism and greedy conquest. Just ask a Native American. Or a Mexican.
Still, in 2018, it’s worth reviewing just a few ways the United States is, indeed, darkly exceptional.
Other countries are sometimes aggressive and expansionist (think Russian irredentism and Chinese bullying in the South China Sea), but only the United States maintains a worldwide system of hundreds of military bases in scores of countries. The United States military even divides the entire planet into a series of geographic combatant commands (GCCs), each led by a four-star flag officer—a figure as much imperial proconsul as humble soldier. Most Americans can’t seem to fathom why these forward deployments on every continent appear aggressive to so many global citizens. Still, one wonders how the U.S. would react if China set up bases in Mexico or Russia did the same in Newfoundland.
How about prepping for and actually fighting overseas wars? Well, we’re the champs here, too. In 2016, baseline U.S. military spending reached $611 billion, and it’s only going to rise—by about $100 billion—under Trump. That’s more than China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, India, France, the United Kingdom, Japan and Germany combined. Oh, yeah, and the last six are all U.S. “allies” or “strategic partners.” Despite the prevailing rhetoric of peace and harmony, the U.S. is also the leader in global arms sales, including transactions with some of the world’s worst human rights abusers.
In terms of active conflict, the U.S. military has been at war now for nearly 17 straight years. In that time, America has conducted more overt regime changes—three—than any other country. Each of those regime change operations, whether in Afghanistan, Iraq or Libya, has led to chaos, civil war and millions of dead. None of these post-invasion countries could reasonably be labeled free or stable despite all the bloodshed and trillions spent. And America’s wars are still spreading. In 2016 alone, the U.S. dropped 26,000-plus bombs on at least seven countries. Given the current mood in Washington, expect that number only to rise.
No we weren’t “built by god” and no “jesus” exists. You’re an impossibly stupid little girl who knows nothing whose head has been filled with gibberish, nonsense and lies
I think we’re done now
Every time you write something you demonstrate just how little you know. Franklin, Jefferson, Thomas Paine had nothing but contempt for your cult. Google Jefferson bible if you doubt me.
We were founded as a SECULAR nation where people were free to “believe” whatever stupid krap they wanted to. Had nothing to do with any “god” as we plowed our way across the nation slaughtering the natives, mexicans and chinese who came to work here ….you know very little and speak too much
So what? Everyone was part of a religious cult back then…has nothing to do with the character of this nation or its founding. WHO CARES WHAT ANYONE BELIEVES?
What matters is WHAT’S TRUE!!
Was Benjamin Franklin an atheist? – Quora
https://www.quora.com/Was-Benjamin-Franklin-an-atheist
Dec 31, 2015 – No, he was more of a Deist. He distrusted organized religion and certainly did not believe in Christian dogma. You might call him a believer in intelligent design; as a scientist, he felt that the orderly structure of the universe was due to the h…
I posted that wonderful essay for you first and because it was so good I used it on jacks site…So what?
Tell me one of your truly original thoughts….just one truly original thoughts that didn’t come from someone else
Einstein…lol
You’re sorry for me? LOL!
I’m not the ignorant one, the brainwashed one, the one wedded to a superstitious cult, the one who doesn’t value truth or evidence, the one who simply believes what she wants to believe, the one ignorant of history both american and biblical and I’m not the one terrified of opposing points of view etc.
Pray your dull brains out….nothing will come of it.
So your “god” plays national favorites huh? Does he send hurricanes to New Orleans to punish the gays too? You are incapable of thought. I pity you
My replies keep disappearing
Blocking my replies for saying the name of the Hitler party..lol
Nationalism is an expression of being better than everyone else. Germany paraded a lot of flags too didn’t they? It separates people, sets them apart from one another. Today’s america has invaded a dozen nations, started a dozen wars, bullies its way on the world stage….todays america is NOTHING to be proud of. We killed a million innocent Iraqis and hundreds of thousands of innocent Afgans…football is not place to recruit stupid young men into warriors or to wave flags mindlessly and stupidly without fully knowing history
Telling me the STORY is not evidence for the STORY! LOL
Show me Roman records! Show me independent verifiable accounts! Show me artifacts! Show me actual evidence not a rehash of the STORY! A STORY doesn’t qualify as evidence! If it did then Paul Bunyon was a real guy because there’s a story that says he did this and that! Wake up!
You are giving me one of the weakest most disingenuous apologetics there is….using the bible to prove the bible. That’s NOT how proofs work!
To verify something requires INDEPENDENT evidence not using Lord of the Rings to claim Hobbits really exist!
I know every pitiful argument “believers” make….All of them. They are all biased junk.
They mentioned “christian” CULTS not “christ” None of them were eyewitness to anything and the few words from Josephus have been shown to be fraudulent insertions.
These historians ONLY spoke about the christian cults that did exist at the time…they offer NO evidence for the actual person of “jesus”
Read more carefully
I know all this crap by heart….you’re not giving me anything I haven’t read 100 times
Google doesn’t write the research. Do your research any way you like…just answer my questions about authorship and eyewitnesses
Don’t provide me with opinion or anything else that lacks actual verifiable data…I know the answer already but go ahead and see for yourself
No it isn’t. You will prove to yourself that no one knows who wrote the gospels, they were written by story tellers not eye witnesses and there goes your whole argument
So..if you were taking a subway and some guy was standing on the platform claiming to be “jesus” or claiming that he’s talking to “jesus”…..would you move closer to him or further away?
I’d have to ask you too…”hope” for what? Existing for all eternity in some form kissing the celestial dictators butt forever and ever? Even perpetual Disneyland would grow so mundane and boring you would beg for death. Life is good because it’s fleeting. Eating ice cream every day forever and ever would lose its appeal very quickly. No flower would be beautiful if it bloomed all the time…it would look like dirt after a while. A flower is special because its bloom and fragrance are short lived. It is unique because it’s fleeting and things that are rare are more valuable. Perpetual anything would be torture….you need to THINK!
A make believe fantasy in other words. A denial of reality in exchange for some make believe fill in the blanks juvenile wish thinking….like a 3 year old child
NO! All you or anyone would have to do to disprove evolution would be to find a modern mammal fossil in an ancient layer containing dinosaur fossils…..No one EVER has! Every layer in the geologic record shows EXACTLY what should be there from simplest life forms at the bottom to modern life forms at the top….No one has EVER found it to be otherwise
Were you there to see adam eve and the talking snake?
No you do not KNOW…you make believe you know
To know something you MUST be able to demonstrate it
You don’t need a book to tell you that what is true and honest is noble and worthy….The ironic thing however is that NOTHING in your book is true!! Nothing is honest! It’s a story!! You can show NOTHING in there as actually true!
Mr Pud,
Are you saying that the Bible is full of lies? That nothing in it is even remotely true?
Archaeology has proved time and time again that the bible is true.
Did you know that current surviving bible manuscripts get closer to the original work than any other manuscript from the ancient world?
You have mentioned before that you shouldn’t believe in something you can’t physically see. What about the air around us? You are breathing it and yet you can’t see it, you know it’s there.
No luck so far! I resent you doing that. I don’t want you to waste your time on more nonsense.
Nothing fails like prayer….a million dead children per year proves that..
You would have to DEMONSTRATE that it actually WAS a “miracle” with no natural explanation. I do not ASSUME stupid explanations for things that seem unusual or improbable
If you showed someone from the Bronze Age your smart phone or better yet you answered all kinds of questions using the internet….they would think that a “miracle” wouldn’t they?>
Yeah…have “jesus” show up and do my dirty dishes in the next 10 minutes…waiting
Right! Wives obey your earthly masters! LOL
I don’t “assume” anything…you said “jesus” does things and wants to prove himself to me…well…why didn’t he appear and do my dishes? He didn’t have any problem appearing to people in the past and doing magic tricks.
Tell me…..If “jesus” healed a few lepers why didn’t he cure leprosy? Why did he show off his magic powers to impress a few idiots and…despite having the power to do so…refused to end the suffering of millions of lepers?
What would you think of a drug company that cured 4 people and then withheld the cure from humanity….a drug company who just wanted to show how good they are…
If you are sane you would condemn the drug co just like you should condemn make believe “jesus” Both are moral monsters…you cannot escape this fact
No we haven’t been through any discussion….I show you why you are wrong…I demand that you support your claim…and all you do is make the same unsupported mindless claims over and over.
“Trusting” that your make believe deity has a plan is insane. Why “pray” then if you trust he has a “plan” Do you think you’re begging is going to change that plan?
You wish to be a slave…a simple minded sheep directed by Bronze Age superstitions…I care about what’s true
Who is more rational?
NO. “god” doesn’t tell anyone anything…your Bronze and Iron Age book do….a book written by ignorant superstitious savages….the same ones who tell you that can’t eat seafood or wear mixed fabric clothing.
You KNOW nothing of the sort…you play make believe…if you actually KNEW you could demonstrate it which you’ve proven time and time again that you can’t
You do not have any invisible friends…grow up now
And I told you 100 times that I do not care what you SAY I care about what you can PROVE. I don’t care what your mom believes, your preacher believes, what your church believes…I CARE ABOUT WHAT IS ACTUALLY TRUE!
If your ancient book is “gods word” then your “god” is a genocidal maniac….the flood story proves that….any “god” who had to destroy his own creation is no better than a psychotic child throwing a tantrum….to willingly KILL innocent animals, plants, babies in the womb is SICK! and you have no way around this.
Yet you worship this imaginary monster? What does that say about the state of your mind?
Mr pud,
Have you ever read the Bible? Do you realize that God did it because mankind had become wicked. They had made awful choices and they wrecked the world. God loved us but he had to flood the world. Don’t forget that he saved 2 of every animal so that they could continue living and rebreed.
Mr. Pud,
God gave you a chance to choose what you want to do in your life. He’s not going to show up and do all of your chores!
He did all those miracles at that time to prove Himself as God. If ONLY you ASK in, PRAY to Him, then He will reveal Himself to you.
Look, we don’t know what happened in your life, or what your situation is with God. If you’re willing to share, what happened to you that made you so against Christianity, and God? Then, together, we can work together. Find a solution.
LOL!
Look, I’ve already gone round and round with a stupid indoctrinated know nothing young lady here and all she did the entire time was offer the same stupid mindless unsupported claims and assertions that you’re offering.
I’m not interested in engaging another brainwashed young cult member who has no respect for reason, logic or evidence
Your cult is evil. I don’t do evil. I oppose evil and I mostly oppose those who lie to children which is exactly what your mental jail keepers have done to you
Have a nice night
I’m not out to recruit people…that’s the vile job of your parents and preachers.
I don’t have conversations with dummies
Your memory seems to be as weak as your reasoning ability
I want religious cults all banished to the dust bin of history where all the other 9999 “gods” reside
I want a world ruled by reason and evidence …. all religious cults are the polar opposite of reason and a a terrible step back into the dark ages of ignorance and superstition
I’m in total control. Why do you keep engaging me?
I’ll give you the last word…I don’t converse with immature little girls online…cheers!
Hey! So I am replying to this post because I can’t find the original post buried beneath the argument that has so rapidly appeared!
Just so you have a wee bit of background, I am actually the one who asked this question.
Might I ask what it is you do believe in? I read through many of the comments and I found many things that you do not believe in but failed to locate anything that you do believe in. We all believe in something.
I don’t “believe” in anything. “Belief” is the most dishonest position one can have. With “belief” there is no requirement for being true and every “belief” has the same status as every other “belief” A “belief” in alien abduction has the same standing as a “belief” in “jesus”, bigfoot or the loch ness monster.
What I do is “accept” certain propositions to degrees of certainty depending upon the strength of the evidence.
For example….I do not “believe” in “evolution” rather I accept the theory given that it is the best explanation for how species change over time. I accept the theory because all the evidence indicates that it is true. I remain open to changing my position should the evidence change.
Any idiot can “believe” anything therefore “belief” is a dishonest position. To accept any claim or proposition requires understanding, evidence and the ability to be demonstrated as true. “Belief” has no requirements whatsoever
Hm. Interesting position. I am engaging in this conversation with the definition of believe being “knowledge acted upon. Something that you know is true so you trust it to happen.” Kind of like whatever you are doing right now. Take a deep breath. Exhale. You just believed something. You believed that your body could handle the air you took in and you acted in that believe by inhaling. Yes, it was probably subconscious but that is half my point. Belief in something is engrained into every human being.
It is the ONLY sane and rational position.
If you “know” something there’s no need to “believe” in it. However you can “believe” in pink unicorns without even a shred of evidence to support your “belief” “Knowledge” might be viewed as justifiable “belief” but I see the two as complete opposites.
You can “believe” in things like invisible undetectable “gods” absent any evidence or proof for their existence but you cannot “know” that “gods” exist without facts and evidence.
Therefore I do not “believe” in anything and neither should any rational person
Well, it seems our definitions are not quite on the same page of the dictionary. Thanks for allowing me to express my thoughts and beliefs on the subject. I’m glad you so firmly know what position you hold. Apart from a beleif in God and eternity, that is all humans really have. The sense of being right and the concert of reaching our goals.
In the end. One of us holds th correct position. I suppose only time will prove it to the world.
Have a great day!
You are completely wrong. The “dictionary” gives common usages it is not the arbiter of what is true or false. I gave you the logical rational differences between “belief” and “knowledge” and they stand because they are logical.
A “belief” in Thor, Krishna, Apollo or jesus is not “all we have” One can have a totally fine sense of being without “belief” in absurd superstitions and mythology.
Considering that men have invented at least 10,000 “gods” you have very very slim odds of being right
Sorry I am just now getting back to you. I have been rather busy. I can see that we both have very different views and are both convinced we hold the correct one. Perhaps this conversation ought to end here. I have enjoyed it, but I feel that neither of us is going to be encouraged from this conversation. I hope you have a great week!!
That’s the typical reaction of the deluded indoctrinated sheep when confronted with rational arguments…run away..run away!
The difference son is that I can show my stance to be correct while you can only continue to make unsupported “claims” and “assertions”
Well, it appears I’m typical. Although I haven’t really heard that. Ever.
By the way, I’m actually female so “son” doesn’t really apply to me 🙂
I’m sure there are many things you haven’t heard given that it’s likely you live a very controlled, sheltered and insulated life. No doubt all you ever hear is the repetitious drone of your cult peers and elders who want more than anything to keep you isolated from the rational secular world
Behind every mask is a sincere face. 😄 Thanks for the compliment.
Thanks for the compliment. Lets be careful not to sound as though we are taking side though 🙂
Still waiting….nothing’s happening
If “jesus” wanted to do something don’t you think he could just show up and do it? If it’s so important to him that everyone “believe” in him (why would that matter to a god?) he could just show up!! Go on tee vee…do some miracles…seems he didn’t have any problem showing off back in the day eh? Why not now if it’s so damn important? Think!!! THINK!!!
Dishes didn’t get done…better pray harder
NO, “he” doesn’t do shit…the story book says “he” did this or that…you cannot demonstrate a single instance where “he” intervened and suspended natural law to effect some “miracle”…You cannot prove this stupid claim.
“Believing” without “seeing” is the definition of GULLIBLE!
All you do my young friend is parrot the slop they’ve fed you and make endless claims that you NEVER are able to support.
You should think about this
Who cares what an absurd ancient book written by ignorant savages 2000 years ago says? Only an idiot would follow a book they don’t even have a clue about who authored it and is demonstrably wrong about everything.
Mr. Pud,
So you don’t believe that Da Vinci existed? Or the Aztecs? Or all the other Historical Figures that lived in that time? Because technically, Jesus is also known as a Historical Figure, but just has other titles.
Not too bright are you?
1. I don’t “believe” anything. I accept certain propositions to degrees of certainty based upon the strength of evidence. Only stupid people “believe” things. I “know” things to degrees of certainty and change my position when the evidence changes
2. Da Vinci has self portraits, volumes written about his life and times. He left paintings and sculpture and has official records of his existence. It is highly probable that he existed
3. The Aztecs were a civilization and their remains and descendants are all over the place! No one questions that they existed as a civilization.
jesus is a make believe character in a story book who has absolutely NO historical evidence to support his existence
We shouldn’t chat…you’re not right in the head
We can measure “air” Study it, test for it, we know what it’s made of etc etc
No one has “proved” that any “god” exists….science doesn’t deal in “proofs” it deals in probability and theories
You need to think things through before you write to me again ok?
Mr. Pud,
Are you saying that because we can’t see air, it’s not real? Science has proved that both air and God exist.
LOL…He “demonstrated” NOTHING.
Feelings and fuzzy personal experience is not evidence.
If it were then aliens would exist, Elvis would exist, Buddah would exist etc etc
You clearly do not know what it means to actually demonstrate something to be true
It means absolutely nothing because it is not evidence
Point out one thing in his infantile babble that can be considered evidence
I watch everything…did you bother to watch any that I sent you?
Well if you’re not interested in opposing points of view you’re a very narrow minded blind individual uninterested in learning anything
And?…any questions?
Who says it’s a “mistake” Demonstrate that it should have been something else and thereby a “mistake”
Is it a “mistake” that 99.9% of everything thing that ever lived is now extinct?
Oh so every animal that’s gone extinct…been wiped out…from passenger pigeons to velociraptors are extinct because of their sin? hahahhahahha! Come on girl…grow up
Millions of plant species too eh? Because of sin? You’re killing me…lol
Mr. Pud,
Do you realize that 84% of the people in the world have a religion? And 1/3 of those people are Christians? Do you really think that many people would believe a lie?? Read or watch the movie “The Case for Christ” by Lee Strobel. It’s about a skeptic like you, trying to prove Christ wrong.
Also– I have a response to your statement.
1. If life was perfect, no one would have a need for a God, much less have a reason to live. Here’s a question for you, why do you live? What’s the point of your life?
2. God doesn’t let people die and starve. He gave man free will, a chance to be with Him. You can’t force a relationship on someone!! If those people turn to God, He can do anything, if only they LET Him. And, if they die, they’ll go straight to Heaven.
Also– that “book” is actually history put together! Every religion, culture, society, etc, ALL have some sort of beginning story or relation to God. Tell me, why are you pin-pointing Christianity?
100% of the people in the world once “believed” it flat. Was it? Is it?
Lee Strobel and his book are complete bullshit totally discredited. He is NOT a skeptic and nothing in his book is rational, logical or demonstrable.
For a very good dismantling of his stupid book watch this series …He destroys Strobel and his book 1 chapter at a time
Life is what you make it…You determine your purpose. It is NO purpose to serve a celestial dictator who threatens you with eternal damnation for the horrible crime of “believing” nonsense on no evidence
Could your “god” keep a million children under the age of 5 from dying horrible deaths? Yes or No
5 year old children cannot reason..they are blameless yet your “god” just watches them suffer and die
Prove the existence of your make believe fairy tale “heaven” place
Every culture for the most part has a “creation” MYTH…yep…A MYTH
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j60-eK5sfwk&list=PL8B722E1FA8681B70
Just typed something you should be curious about
You can if you want…this is true. Ruminate on this as well..
What is the “default” position upon the birth of every human that has ever lived?
What “belief” does any newborn have?
They have none. They cannot reason.
Every baby is born an A theist….without a theology, without a faith, without a “god” without a religion
This is clearly demonstrated by comparing the religious leanings of children with respect to geography
What religion is a baby born in Saudi Arabia most likely to be?
How about in India, China, Kansas?
That’s true…they can be indoctrinated but still retain enough critical thinking skills to reject their indoctrination…it’s what you should be doing
The point was…Ones “faith” is almost entirely decided by the place of ones birth and the parents they inherit. This FACT supports my contention that it’s all man made and all man propagated.
Ok…which one is right and how do you know
Not “believe”…KNOW and if you asked anyone your age from a different “faith” what would they say?
Demonstrate that it was physically “jesus” that changed you. The same claim could be made by a muslim girl or a hindu girl about Krishna or a Buddhist girl about Buddah
You could do all those things without a “belief” in a storybook
Maturity, compassion, wisdom of age all allow for those things such as forgiveness…no “god” required
You’re missing the entire point.
A Hindu girl could say exactly what you said…She could say that Krishna changed her life that she was told about Krishna and her life changed.
How are your competing claims different?
They are not.
Neither of you can justify your individual explanation for whatever you felt happened to you…you both are holding empty sacks
You both experienced something and just uncritically ascribed the cause to an invisible deity that you heard about from someone else. Neither of you KNOW if it’s true or not do you?
For that matter…every girl who ever lived who experienced some change could make the same claim…A Roman girl praying to Athena could claim that she changed her or a Greek girl praying to Zeus could claim that Zeus changed her heart…we can do this with every religion and every god that was ever invented.
They ALL are on the same quicksand that you stand on. You can no more deny their claims as they could deny yours as none of you actually KNOW you just “believe”
You are wrong about that and even if you weren’t so what? Because your storybook is somehow an improvement on earlier storybooks gives it credibility? The FACT is that antiquity is FULL of dying and rising savior “gods” Isis, Romulus to name two…there are dozens of similar stories that originated long before yours did….This is why you need to do your research. You wouldn’t say this if you had studied as you would know that your story is a direct rip off of numerous more ancient pagan and greek mythology
CLAIMS are NOT TRUTHS!
No you do not. You find the NEW testament writers writing what was expected based upon the OLD testament…there are no prophecies and I can prove this to you
Virgins do not give birth.
It is NOT prophesy to write a narrative after reading a story about what what claimed would happen! Hello?
They wrote the NEW book to conform to the OLD….they made the story fit..that’s not prophesy
Now you watch this tonight and get back to me…I insist
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UulusbcS8V0
If you’re going to be lazy then we should stop. I’m giving you real information. If you are unwilling to invest your time why should I?
I don’t care what some unknown author says in a book! Neither should you! I care about what is true! I do not read a book and just assume it’s right…that’s called gullible! Don’t be so gullible!
Demonstrate or even define what a “holy spirit” is…I’ll bet you can’t So why spit out words and phrases that are meaningless and nonsensical woo woo?
Every “holy” book makes claims. You don’t “believe” Muhammad rode a flying horse to heaven and hung out with the prophets including “jesus” do you? Why not? It was written in a book!
You need to care about what is TRUE not what someone says or what someone else “believes” The world if full of “beliefs” and damn short of KNOWLEDGE.
We arrive at truth through rational argument, evidence, experiment etc not through fuzzy feelings and we surely do NOT arrive at truth by listening to Bronze Age religious psychotic cult leaders! Wake up!
Read this over to yourself several times…”The holy spirit is a form of god”….that means absolutely NOTHING. Woo woo words that say nothing.
Demonstrate an actual “Healing” on account of any divine intervention. Why won’t your “god” EVER heal an amputee? Why do we have hospitals and medicine if all it takes is 2 holy spirits in the morning?
Demonstrate that anyone can speak a language they’ve never been exposed to.
You are just way too gulible dear girl
Again…how can you be so gullible and credulous? Do you believe everything everyone says? How about alien abductions? You could find hundreds of people who claim they were snatched up in the middle of the night…any proof? NO!
Oh so “god” magically heals some people but others have to suffer and take meds? Come on girl.
Tell me…where is your healing “god”?….
About 29,000 children under the age of five – 21 each minute – die every day, mainly from preventable causes. More than 70 per cent of almost 11 million child deaths every year are attributable to six causes: diarrhoea, malaria, neonatal infection, pneumonia, preterm delivery, or lack of oxygen at birth.
Ok…think before you type. Don’t tell me what you “believe” tell me what is actually true.
What language was it? How do you KNOW it was a language at all not just babbling in tongues? How do you KNOW if it was another language that he didn’t actually know it?
You do not KNOW anything! Did you study this phenomenon? What stupid sense would speaking another language make anyway?
There you go again! CLAIMS!! ASSERTIONS!!
“god is everywhere”….NONSENSE! which “god” How do you know? Show it! Prove it! Demonstrate it! You CANNOT JUST CLAIM STUFF!!
And Yeah…if it were true that your celestial dictator was reading our thoughts and convicting us of thought crime it would be MORE THAN CREEPY! It would be tyranny! It would make you nothing but a puppet slave!
You MUST stop making CLAIMS! and you need to think through the implications of what you claim this invisible “god” is doing while he watches millions of children die every year
Why do you and why should ANYONE CARE what an ancient BOOK says?
There are HUNDREDS of ancient BOOKS that say all kinds of crap…SO WHAT?
It doesn’t make a thing in them TRUE!
STOP!!!!!! Stop regurgitating the fable…I know it already. It’s nonsense! gibberish! fable! fiction! FALSE and provably WRONG! on EVERYTHING!
Do snakes talk? donkeys talk? Did the sun stand still in the sky? How come no one on EARTH reported this? How come none of it can be tested or recreated?
Again…this is pointless…You CHOOSE to be gullible and credulous “believing” every manner of ridiculous nonsense shoveled your way. I don’t need to hear one more word about your cult…I KNOW IT INTIMATELY! I’ve read your book and others like it and they are all FALSE in every way imaginable!
ONLY the most ignorant and gullible people buy into nonsense blindly which is exactly what you are doing
You don’t know a single author of your book and you know absolutely nothing about them. Nothing! They wrote down legends and stories that were rip offs from other cults in a time of mass hysteria where the Jews were begging for some messiah. They were stupid dumb superstitious idiots! Why would ANYONE simply believe such unsupported irrational delusional nonsense?
Paul had VISIONS!! Do you automatically believe every psychotic who has a vision and sees things that aren’t there?
I think you would!
It means nothing either way. Life is what it is..the universe is headed for “heat death” 99% of every species that ever lived is extinct, the Earth will be swallowed by the sun….that’s the brute reality of it….so what?
Only a child puts his or her hands over his eyes and ears to avoid the truth.
Our life is precious because it is fleeting it’s not a doormat to wipe your feet on before you go to some afterlife….what sense is that? What kind of puppetmaster would your “god” be if that was the way reality was constructed?
We make our own “meaning” There is no “meaning” in make believe.
Bazillions of ALL religious people are deluded! Not wrong, misguided, indoctrinated, fearful, gullible, credulous and subject to the forces of the cultures they live in
Stop whining like a child….what was it like before you were born? Did the universe end? No…it goes on with or without us and that’s just a BRUTE FACT that you can either accept and deal with or be a child for life playing make believe because it feels good
Document a SINGLE case ever of someone going to Africa not knowing the language and then suddenly (with the holy ghost) being able to speak fluent Swahili….just one.
You think like a gullible child.
Why doesn’t your “god” or “jesus” just appear to the Ugandans! He never had a problem doing that in the old days per your storybook. Why MIA now? Why take the most inefficient road to spreading the “good news” of your apocalyptic death cult? Why no go on CNN? or send an email to everyone or tweet?
You have to think!!
Claims..nothing but baseless claims and assertions. Stop it.
Here…a minister of many years explains why he’s not a christian anymore…see if you can take issue with a thing he says
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OXI4jGaotHU
Go to youtube and search this TTA Podcast 259: God – The Most Unpleasant Character in All Fiction (with Dan Barker) RADIO VERSION
The host of the channel was a rabid christian radio host and the minister was a speaking in tongues evangelical…they aren’t now and they explain why.
You would do yourself a great service if you watched a few of the “Thinking Atheist” youtubes…you’ll learn a lot
State it again please…directly and clearly
Dan Barker answers your question very well in this video…watch it
I answered you 4 times!!
Seems your censors deleted them
This was my answer 3 hours ago
It means nothing either way. Life is what it is..the universe is headed for “heat death” 99% of every species that ever lived is extinct, the Earth will be swallowed by the sun….that’s the brute reality of it….so what?
Only a child puts his or her hands over his eyes and ears to avoid the truth.
Our life is precious because it is fleeting… it’s not a doormat to wipe your feet on before you go to some afterlife….what sense is that? What kind of puppetmaster would your “god” be if that was the way reality was constructed?
Did you ever take a really fun vacation? Why did your bother seeing as it was going to end and you were going to have to return home sooner or later? Was you vacation worthless because it wasn’t eternal?
It would be the worst possible outcome for both of us. You would spend eternity in insufferable boredom praising non stop a psychotic egotistical maniac along with millions of incredibly boring people. I guess I would burn forever at the hand of your all loving celestial dictator for the horrible crime of nonbelief in the absurd offered without evidence but I would be with all the cool interesting people! lol
Now if you’re wrong and the muslims are right guess what happens to you?
Show that muslims aren’t right…you have NO right to just declare things. If you can’t show it you don’t know it.
I’m really tired of engaging you now as all you do is regurgitate your fairytale storybook make believe nonsense. I’m not interested in irrational pretend.
Your fantasy “afterlife” in this so called “heaven” would suck! It would be an infinity of the same…over and over and over until you wish you were dead.
There is no satan and I’ve given you a video on the history of this fabricated cartoon character
I’m afraid this is over with you. I don’t do infantile conversations and it’s now obvious that’s all your capable of
“wallow in your unbelief” “quitter” See? Infantile
There is no point in continuing our exchange because it is not an exchange of ideas it is you parroting the same cult nonsense over and over and over.
You do not care about what is true you care about nurturing the make believe fantasy of invisible realms, ancient magic books, no name author claims, superstition, woo woo, baseless claims, meaningless assertions and regurgitation of the same tired and tiring fluff and generally clinging to every unsupported absurd “belief” you’ve been brainwashed with.
You do not consider the arguments I make and simply roll right into your next repetitive make believe story that you absolutely cannot verify, demonstrate, prove or even offer a shred of evidence for
I am a philosopher, critical thinker, educated man with 3 times your age in life experience. This discussion has devolved into trying to make sense to a 4 year old having a tantrum. You cannot be reasoned with because you have no respect for reason!
You want to believe whatever some idiot tells you, whatever feels good, whatever eases your uncertainty and quells your fears. I don’t roll that way….I CARE FOR WHAT IS TRUE
I hope you grow up soon and don’t remain the gullible simple minded blissful rube whose mind was trashed by your mentally abusive parents, peers and priests
“I don’t know or trust you well enough to know that they’re are legit and not something that I don’t want to see.”
See? You only want to see and hear what you want to see and hear! You SHOULD, if you cared about learning, watch and listen to ALL the things you normally wouldn’t! Watching only what reinforces your current delusions will never open your mind to anything different. You’ll grow up to be a narrow minded gullible dummy.
I’ve watched, read and listened to EVERY religious apologist that’s ever written a word. I’ve listened to every debate. I care about KNOWING WHAT’S TRUE not insulating myself in favor of some incorrect cult think.
Who is the Gestapo on this site “approving” my comments?
By what authority does he get to decide what’s appropriate or not? Tell him to piss off. I don’t need a daddy or a monitor
They are Historical Documentaries which would enlighten you as to why you believe what you do, why you are wrong, why its all man made nonsense and how religion evolved….it’s stuff you HAVE TO KNOW to be able to speak intelligently instead of being an infantile parrot of some cult
NO….If it’s “christian music” I’d rather shoot myself in the head
I KNOW all your beliefs. I”ve been a student of religious cults for more than 40 years. There’s nothing new under the sun
I’ve studied religions, cults, belief systems, anthropology, and the like for 40 years. I know them all, where they came from, what they profess and why gullible people created them and follow them to this day much to their regret
Been there done that….Did a lot of stupid things, some smart things, some reckless things but I produced 2 amazing sons who I’m going skiing with in Austria come March….those 2 boys made my life complete
You live in Alaska? Always wanted to visit there…on my bucket list.
I’m away to a good book now….have a nice rest of your evening
No that’s not what I say. There were countless charlatan “faith healer” “mystics” running around the area at the time.
What I say is that there is NO actual historical evidence to support a rational belief that any “jesus” character existed.
Everything that was ever written about this mythical man came from non contemporary sources….Paul who was a psychotic murdering lunatic and the 4 gospels…the 4 gospels who no one knows who wrote, who were all spins on the book of mark and which were all written up to 100 years after the alleged “jesus” supposedly roamed around with a little reporter writing down exactly what he said….last part was sarcasm
Tell me….who took all those direct quotes from the lips of mythical “jesus”? Who actually followed him around and carefully wrote down the exact words that appear in red letters in your book?
More curious who was this reporter who was able to document when mythical “jesus” was ALL ALONE in the desert and the garden! How could anyone quote anyone when no one was even there?!!!
It’s a FABLE! A story written down generations later from cumulative oral story telling
Now you would KNOW all of this if you watched the Historical Documentaries I posted which detail how your myth was created and how the book was compiled over many decades
But you’re not interested in reality much are you?
LOL!
Thursday is named after the “god” Thor….Saturday after the “god” Saturn…HOW COULD THIS BE IF THOR AND SATURN NEVER EXISTED?
I wish you would think. THINK!
You should THINK! It’s not obvious that he was born if he never actually existed.
You can offer NO evidence for the existence of any “jesus” there is NONE. There is NO contemporary writings, no eye witnesses, nothing left behind, no writings by him, no artifacts….not even a home made bird house for his mom
NOTHING!
Look all you want…you’ll find exactly nothing.
A rational person would have looked BEFORE believing…
Oh so if you read the National Enquirer about a 3 headed alien baby you’ll believe it?
No…you verify the credibility of the SOURCE first before you believe it…to do otherwise is to be a gullible fool
Tell me…Who wrote “Matthew, Mark, Luke and John? Tell me their exact names, when they lived and where, who they were and how you know.
This is how you verify the “source” to see if it is credible.
See if you can find that out…you won’t…there is NO information whatsoever
You can’t be serious! What if the authors were psychotic, mentally ill, fanatics, crazy, delusional, liars etc?
It matters ENTIRELY who they were, what their motives were, what their mental state was, what their education was etc etc etc
DEMONSTRATE that any “god” told them what to write? More of your mindless claims and silly assertions.
Is your “god” responsible then for the hundreds and hundreds of contradictions and falsehoods in the book?
You can’t have it both ways
This site is not working well for me…Here’s a few of the contradictions…See how little you really know? Yet you remain so gullible even as I prove everything to you
GE 1:3-5 On the first day, God created light, then separated light and darkness.
GE 1:14-19 The sun (which separates night and day) wasn’t created until the fourth day.
GE 1:11-12, 26-27 Trees were created before man was created.
GE 2:4-9 Man was created before trees were created.
GE 1:20-21, 26-27 Birds were created before man was created.
GE 2:7, 19 Man was created before birds were created.
GE 1:24-27 Animals were created before man was created.
GE 2:7, 19 Man was created before animals were created.
GE 1:26 Man is to have dominion over fish, birds, cattle, and all wild animals, yet–
GE 2:15-17 It is wrong to be able to tell good from evil, right from wrong.
GE 1:26-27 Man and woman were created at the same time.
GE 2:7, 21-22 Man was created first, woman sometime later.
GE 1:28 God encourages reproduction.
LE 12:1-8 God requires purification rites following childbirth which, in effect, makes childbirth a sin. (Note: The period for purification following the birth of a daughter is twice that for a son.)
GE 1:31 God was pleased with his creation.
GE 6:5-6 God was not pleased with his creation.
(Note: That God should be displeased is inconsistent with the concept of omniscience as well as with the fact that God allegedly does not change his mind: NU 23:19-20, 1SA 15:29, JA 1:17.)
GE 2:4, 4:26, 12:8, 22:14-16, 26:25 God was already known as “the Lord” (Jahveh or Jehovah) much earlier than the time of Moses.
EX 6:2-3 God was first known as “the Lord” (Jahveh or Jehovah) at the time of the Egyptian Bondage, during the life of Moses.
GE 2:17 Adam was to die the very day that he ate the forbidden fruit.
GE 5:5 Adam lived 930 years.
GE 2:15-17, 3:4-6 It is wrong to want to be able to tell good from evil.
HE 5:13-14 It is immature to be unable to tell good from evil.
GE 4:4-5 God prefers Abel’s offering and has no regard for Cain’s.
2CH 19:7, AC 10:34, RO 2:11 God shows no partiality. He treats all alike.
GE 4:9 God asks Cain where his brother Able is.
PR 15:3, JE 16:17, 23:24-25, HE 4:13 God is everywhere. He sees everything. Nothing is hidden from his view.
GE 4:15, DT 32:19-27, IS 34:8 God is a vengeful god.
EX 15:3, IS 42:13, HE 12:29 God is a warrior. God is a consuming fire.
EX 20:5, 34:14, DT 4:24, 5:9, 6:15, 29:20, 32:21 God is a jealous god.
LE 26:7-8, NU 31:17-18, DT 20:16-17, JS 10:40, JG 14:19, EZ 9:5-7 The Spirit of God is (sometimes) murder and killing.
NU 25:3-4, DT 6:15, 9:7-8, 29:20, 32:21, PS 7:11, 78:49, JE 4:8, 17:4, 32:30-31, ZP 2:2 God is angry. His anger is sometimes fierce.
2SA 22:7-8 (KJV) “I called to the Lord; … he heard my voice; … The earth trembled and quaked, … because he was angry. Smoke came from his nostrils. Consuming fire came from his mouth, burning coals blazed out of it.”
EZ 6:12, NA 1:2, 6 God is jealous and furious. He reserves wrath for, and takes revenge on, his enemies. “… who can abide in the fierceness of his anger? His fury is poured out like fire, and rocks are thrown down by him.”
2CO 13:11, 14, 1JN 4:8, 16 God is love.
GA 5:22-23 The fruit of the Spirit of God is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.
GE 4:16 Cain went away (or out) from the presence of the Lord.
JE 23:23-24 A man cannot hide from God. God fills heaven and earth.
GE 6:3 The Lord said, “My spirit will not be in man forever, for he is only flesh; so the days of his life will be a hundred and twenty years.”
GE 9:29 Noah lived nine hnndred and fifty years.
GE 6:4 There were Nephilim (giants) before the Flood.
GE 7:21 All creatures other than Noah and his clan were annihilated by the Flood.
NU 13:33 There were Nephilim after the Flood.
GE 6:6. EX 32:14, NU 14:20, 1SA 15:35, 2SA 24:16 God does change his mind.
NU 23:19-20, 1SA 15:29, JA 1:17 God does not change his mind.
GE 6:19-22, 7:8-9, 7:14-16 Two of each kind are to be taken, and are taken, aboard Noah’s Ark.
GE 7:2-5 Seven pairs of some kinds are to be taken, and are taken, aboard the Ark.
GE 7:1 Noah was righteous.
JB 1:1,8, JB 2:3 Job was righteous.
LK 1:6 Zechariah and Elizabeth were righteous.
JA 5:16 Some men are righteous, (which makes their prayers effective).
1JN 3:6-9 Christians become righteous (or else they are not really Christians).
RO 3:10, 3:23, 1JN 1:8-10 No one was or is righteous.
GE 7:7 Noah and his clan enter the Ark.
GE 7:13 They enter the Ark (again?).
GE 11:7-9 God sows discord.
PR 6:16-19 God hates anyone who sows discord.
GE 11:9 At Babel, the Lord confused the language of the whole world.
1CO 14:33 Paul says that God is not the author of confusion.
GE 11:12 Arpachshad [Arphaxad] was the father of Shelah.
LK 3:35-36 Cainan was the father of Shelah. Arpachshad was the grandfather of Shelah.
GE 11:26 Terah was 70 years old when his son Abram was born.
GE 11:32 Terah was 205 years old when he died (making Abram 135 at the time).
GE 12:4, AC 7:4 Abram was 75 when he left Haran. This was after Terah died. Thus, Terah could have been no more than 145 when he died; or Abram was only 75 years old after he had lived 135 years.
GE 12:7, 17:1, 18:1, 26:2, 32:30, EX 3:16, 6:2-3, 24:9-11, 33:11, NU 12:7-8, 14:14, JB 42:5, AM 7:7-8, 9:1 God is seen.
EX 33:20, JN 1:18, 1JN 4:12 God is not seen. No one can see God’s face and live. No one has ever seen him.
GE 10:5, 20, 31 There were many languages before the Tower of Babel.
GE 11:1 There was only one language before the Tower of Babel.
GE 15:9, EX 20:24, 29:10-42, LE 1:1-7:38, NU 28:1-29:40, God details sacrificial offerings.
JE 7:21-22 God says he did no such thing.
GE 16:15, 21:1-3, GA 4:22 Abraham had two sons, Ishmael and Isaac.
HE 11:17 Abraham had only one son.
GE 17:1, 35:11, 1CH 29:11-12, LK 1:37 God is omnipotent. Nothing is impossible with (or for) God.
JG 1:19 Although God was with Judah, together they could not defeat the plainsmen because the latter had iron chariots.
GE 17:7, 10-11 The covenant of circumcision is to be everlasting.
GA 6:15 It is of no consequence.
GE 17:8 God promises Abraham the land of Canaan as an “everlasting possession.”
GE 25:8, AC 7:2-5, HE 11:13 Abraham died with the promise unfulfilled.
GE 17:15-16, 20:11-12, 22:17 Abraham and his half sister, Sarai, are married and receive God’s blessings.
LE 20:17, DT 27:20-23 Incest is wrong.
GE 18:20-21 God decides to “go down” to see what is going on.
PR 15:3, JE 16:17, 23:24-25, HE 4:13 God is everywhere. He sees everything. Nothing is hidden from his view.
GE 19:30-38 While he is drunk, Lot’s two daughters “lie with him,” become pregnant, and give birth to his offspring.
2PE 2:7 Lot was “just” and “righteous.”
GE 22:1-12, DT 8:2 God tempts (tests) Abraham and Moses.
JG 2:22 God himself says that he does test (tempt).
1CO 10:13 Paul says that God controls the extent of our temptations.
JA 1:13 God tests (tempts) no one.
GE 27:28 “May God give you … an abundance of grain and new wine.”
DT 7:13 If they follow his commandments, God will bless the fruit of their wine.
PS 104:15 God gives us wine to gladden the heart.
JE 13:12 “… every bottle shall be filled with wine.”
JN 2:1-11 According to the author of John, Jesus’ first miracle was turning water to wine.
RO 14:21 It is good to refrain from drinking wine.
GE 35:10 God says Jacob is to be called Jacob no longer; henceforth his name is Israel.
GE 46:2 At a later time, God himself uses the name Jacob.
GE 36:11 The sons of Eliphaz were Teman, Omar, Zepho, Gatam, and Kenaz.
GE 36:15-16 Teman, Omar, Zepho, Kenaz.
1CH 1:35-36 Teman, Omar, Zephi, Gatam, Kenaz, Timna, and Amalek.
GE 49:2-28 The fathers of the twelve tribes of Israel are: Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah, Zebulun, Issachar, Dan, Gad, Asher, Naphtali, Joseph, and Benjamin.
RE 7:4-8 (Leaves out the tribe of Dan, but adds Manasseh.)
GE 50:13 Jacob was buried in a cave at Machpelah bought from Ephron the Hittite.
AC 7:15-16 He was buried in the sepulchre at Shechem bought from the sons of Hamor.
EX 3:1 Jethro was the father-in-law of Moses.
NU 10:29, JG 4:11 (KJV) Hobab was the father-in-law of Moses.
EX 3:20-22, DT 20:13-17 God instructs the Israelites to despoil the Egyptians, to plunder their enemies.
EX 20:15, 17, LE 19:13 God prohibits stealing, defrauding, or robbing a neighbor.
EX 4:11 God decides who will be dumb, deaf, blind, etc.
2CO 13:11, 14, 1JN 4:8, 16 God is a god of love.
EX 9:3-6 God destroys all the cattle (including horses) belonging to the Egyptians.
EX 9:9-11 The people and the cattle are afflicted with boils.
EX 12:12, 29 All the first-born of the cattle of the Egyptians are destroyed.
EX 14:9 After having all their cattle destroyed, then afflicted with boils, and then their first-born cattle destroyed, the Egyptians pursue Moses on horseback.
EX 12:13 The Israelites have to mark their houses with blood in order for God to see which houses they occupy and “pass over” them.
PR 15:3, JE 16:17, 23:24-25, HE 4:13 God is everywhere. He sees everything. Nothing is hidden from God.
EX 12:37, NU 1:45-46 The number of men of military age who take part in the Exodus is given as more than 600,000. Allowing for women, children, and older men would probably mean that a total of about 2,000,000 Israelites left Egypt.
1KI 20:15 All the Israelites, including children, number only 7000 at a later time.
EX 15:3, 17:16, NU 25:4, 32:14, IS 42:13 God is a man of war–he is fierce and angry.
RO 15:33, 2CO 13:11, 14, 1JN 4:8, 16 God is a god of love and peace.
EX 20:1-17 God gave the law directly to Moses (without using an intermediary).
GA 3:19 The law was ordained through angels by a mediator (an intermediary).
EX 20:4 God prohibits the making of any graven images whatsoever.
EX 25:18 God enjoins the making of two graven images.
EX 20:5, 34:7, NU 14:18, DT 5:9, IS 14:21-22 Children are to suffer for their parent’s sins.
DT 24:16, EZ 18:19-20 Children are not to suffer for their parent’s sins.
EX 20:8-11, 31:15-17, 35:1-3 No work is to be done on the Sabbath, not even lighting a fire. The commandment is permanent, and death is required for infractions.
MK 2:27-28 Jesus says that the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath (after his disciples were criticized for breaking the Sabbath).
RO 14:5, CN 2:14-16 Paul says the Sabbath commandment was temporary, and to decide for yourself regarding its observance.
EX 20:12, DT 5:16, MT 15:4, 19:19, MK 7:10, 10:19, LK 18:20 Honor your father and your mother is one of the ten commandments. It is reinforced by Jesus.
MT 10:35-37, LK 12:51-53, 14:26 Jesus says that he has come to divide families; that a man’s foes will be those of his own household; that you must hate your father, mother, wife, children, brothers, sisters, and even your own life to be a disciple.
MT 23:9 Jesus says to call no man on earth your father.
I can’t always get back to the most current comment for some reason..has nothing to do with content…So, does your invisible “god” dictate contradictions? Would seem so eh?
I’ve read your dysfunctional story book several times…Doesn’t matter where the list came from they are direct contradictory quotes right off of the pages….It proves that either flawed MEN wrote the book or your “god” lied when he claimed that he wasn’t the “author of confusion”
Which is it?
So what if I copied and pasted someone else’s work? Go dig out your silly book and look for yourself! See if they aren’t true in your own book with your own eyes.
I’m moving on now….You’re infantile and willfully delusional. Anyone who can make up such total bullshit, such total fantasy to explain the nonsense fairy tales in your book is not possible to intelligently communicate with
Thanks for the chat…it’s been fun
I hope you someday see the light
Bye now
A short video showing how evil, wicked, child abusive and stupid your cult really is
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MKd_JGkdW6s
24 hours a day for eternity with Ned Flanders…oh boy!
Don’t forget all your dead pets, fluffy pillows, ice cream every day, wings, angels, harps, billowing clouds and whatever else an undeveloped childs mind can imagine or a grown up undeveloped adult mind can fantasize about.
This is why we’re not discussing or debating….I’m chatting with a child who thinks like a child and speaks like a child
Get back to me in 10 years once you experience the real world outside of your insulated propaganda filled nest
I don’t know you or your situation but I’m 100% certain that you are under someones control, are censored, are told what to think instead of how to think and that your world is a very very closed one tightly monitored and supervised
Do you attend a christian school?
So so sorry if that’s the case
There is no “jesus” It’s all in your imagination. Grow up.
Whos Brett? Why does he get to censor what you can watch?
There are only 2 outcomes to this….1. One of them is right 2, All of them are wrong.
There have been 10,000 religious cults…there are 40,000 flavors of christianity! They all cannot be right but they all can be wrong
Well don’t you think that odd given that “god is not the author of confusion”? That the book you all read is “perfect”?
How could there be any disagreement if the “word” came directly from the almighty?
But the PERFECT UNERRING WORD OF GOD should have no chance of misunderstanding or need of interpretation should it?
Then why are there so many different versions? Why didn’t your all knowing “god” account for this and create a book that there could never be any debate about? Clearly he’s capable no?
Do you even know when your cult was officially born?
Did you know that in 325 AD in Nicea at the order of Emperor Constantine a group of ignorant priests were commanded to get it straight and come up with one interpretation?
Did you know that these MEN who didn’t know the earth circled the sun argued endlessly with two distinct camps emerging….one saying that “jesus” was of the same substance as “god” and the other saying he wasn’t?
Did you know that this was settled by a vote?
And did you know that they then wrote a creed that every cult member was required to “believe?
It was all made up to unify the Roman Empire….all made up buy stupid ignorant men
Why didn’t your “god” type up exact copies for the Chinese and South American Indians? Why were so many wars waged over doctrine? Why couldn’t your almighty “god” make it crystal clear seeing that was supposed to be the whole point of a book!
For bonus points….Show that any Moses ever existed, that there were millions of slaves in Egypt and that they all walked to Palestine over 40 years and left not a single artifact when the actual journey following the coastline would only take a week or two.
Show me….don’t make a claim you can’t back up. Show me actual evidence that more slaves were in Egypt than Egyptians! Never happened..All made up
10 “god”like figures with a story the same as yours about “jesus”
http://listverse.com/2009/04/13/10-christ-like-figures-who-pre-date-jesus/
It proves that YOUR story is nothing but a rip off of many older similar stories….You didn’t invent anything new…you’re just one cult in a long line with the same narrative…investigate it …don’t sluff it off or disregard it…check it out for yourself
I have to wrap this up for the night…tired
Go do some honest research…see if you can find any actual evidence for Moses or the Exodus….you won’t
Look up the flood myth of Gilgamesh ….written before your book…it’s what your authors ripped off…curious huh
Have a good night
They’ll be sorry
Sure you are. I’ll be nice
Aside from being part of a delusional cult that’s a good value to promote
I think you’re spot on with regards to the expectations of young people