Huwy said:
''Real miracles carried out under guidance of science'', this is a contradiction in terms, no miracle there. Also people were being cured from illness long before science had came into being! Hilarious post, but nice sentiment.
The power of prayer - or not...
- Thread starter deicide128
- Start date
''Real miracles carried out under guidance of science'', this is a contradiction in terms, no miracle there. Also people were being cured from illness long before science had came into being! Hilarious post, but nice sentiment.
Theoryofrelativity said:
Thost damn fatcat Christians.
Actually, I'm not sure why you bothered to respond, all you've done is proved my point. Yes, WE are responsible.
And we will only 'evolve' in those higher beings when religion is finally banished from the Earth. Then we can start taking those resources used for worshipping gods and place them where they're needed most.
Lets' start by selling off all the churches and land used for religious purposes and use that money to feed starving children. Do you have a problem with that?
(Q) said:
are you so dense that you missed my 'nice sentiment' comment showing I noted his sentiment!
U want to get off topic and start a slanging match Q, that just about your style, fucking useless at debating so start slagging!
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(Q) said:
Agreed!
You thought I was Christian, no my slagging friend I'm not, no fan of religion at all! lol
Athelwulf said:
You assume it is Gods Will that that men using their logic would be able to prove His existence. If God could be proven then everyone would acknowledge His existence. Do you think God wants people to grudgingly follow Him because He has been proven to exist???No my friend. God is seeking people who have faith/trust in Him even when they do not understand all His will or can prove His existence.
John 20
27 Then He said to Thomas, “Reach your finger here, and look at My hands; and reach your hand here, and put it into My side. Do not be unbelieving, but believing.” 28 And Thomas answered and said to Him, “My Lord and my God!”
29 Jesus said to him, “Thomas, because you have seen Me, you have believed. Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”
I have never gone out to prove God exists. And i know that no one can prove that God does not exist either. Some of the vain attempts i have seen in here make me laugh so much they bring me to tears.
All Praise The Ancient Of Days
Yes, and He does. I see that you haven't read/remembered the Bible too much since Jesus mentions that God allready knows what you pray for and the spirit talks to God in words and utterances not speakable for man.deicide128 said:
However to pray is good nevertheless since it is *very* comforting and can relieve you of your worries, also it connects you in a very deep level where you can confess and seek solutions to your problems (and of course pray for help). Don't underestimate the power of prayer. The Bible tells us that we will find what we seek for. The prayer helps us to establish what we want to search for, so that we constantly search for it, and thus find it where it is (since we know what to look for).
It is so easy to forget.
Adstar:
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M*W: You're not just an ignorant bastard, you're an ignorant christian bastard. You defile your own kind and are an apostate to your faith. You need not worry about atheists murdering your sorry ass, we will gladly dust off your worthlessness from our hands. It will be your own brethren who do you deservedly in. You are a bigot to your own kind. I can't think of anything lower than you.
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M*W: You are one sick individual. Yes, I took part in Vietnam, but I murdered no one. I saved lives. That was my job. I bear no guilt for my service to my country. Both my parents served in the US military (Army and Navy). They were in no way to blame for the atrocities in Japan and Korea, just like I'm not to blame for the horrors in Vietnam. (Yes, those were horrors I saw with my own eyes). My children are in no way to blame for the War in Iraq. No one desires the collateral damage of war, but I have never seen another human being gloat over the loss of lives of those who served their country --especially one's own ilk, like you. How shameful and embarassing! I certainly hope to see comments the christians on this forum post. Even I, as an atheist, feel the pain of christian families and friends who lost soldiers in wars, but you are a judgmental christian who has no regard for human life and sacrifice!
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M*W: If there were a god, which there's not, he should know what's in my heart. But since there is no god, it is enough for me to know what is in my heart. It is not for you to judge me based on what I did for my country, because you don't know. You 'assume' I was running around in the jungle with an M16. You couldn't be more wrong.
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M*W: Why do you 'assume' everybody but yourself is evil? LOL
You reveal nothing except your ignorance which is massive.
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M*W: Well, since no one has come back from your heaven or hell, and no one has yet to even senr a message from their eternal location, it would seem that heaven and hell are both imaginary locations created to extend fear and to control the minds of 'believers'. You are an evil christian. You are possessed by the ignorance in your own mind.
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M*W: You're not just an ignorant bastard, you're an ignorant christian bastard. You defile your own kind and are an apostate to your faith. You need not worry about atheists murdering your sorry ass, we will gladly dust off your worthlessness from our hands. It will be your own brethren who do you deservedly in. You are a bigot to your own kind. I can't think of anything lower than you.
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M*W: You are one sick individual. Yes, I took part in Vietnam, but I murdered no one. I saved lives. That was my job. I bear no guilt for my service to my country. Both my parents served in the US military (Army and Navy). They were in no way to blame for the atrocities in Japan and Korea, just like I'm not to blame for the horrors in Vietnam. (Yes, those were horrors I saw with my own eyes). My children are in no way to blame for the War in Iraq. No one desires the collateral damage of war, but I have never seen another human being gloat over the loss of lives of those who served their country --especially one's own ilk, like you. How shameful and embarassing! I certainly hope to see comments the christians on this forum post. Even I, as an atheist, feel the pain of christian families and friends who lost soldiers in wars, but you are a judgmental christian who has no regard for human life and sacrifice!
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M*W: If there were a god, which there's not, he should know what's in my heart. But since there is no god, it is enough for me to know what is in my heart. It is not for you to judge me based on what I did for my country, because you don't know. You 'assume' I was running around in the jungle with an M16. You couldn't be more wrong.
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M*W: Why do you 'assume' everybody but yourself is evil? LOL
You reveal nothing except your ignorance which is massive.
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M*W: Well, since no one has come back from your heaven or hell, and no one has yet to even senr a message from their eternal location, it would seem that heaven and hell are both imaginary locations created to extend fear and to control the minds of 'believers'. You are an evil christian. You are possessed by the ignorance in your own mind.
Let's start by having the rich pay taxes, whoever they are, and in whatever situation, church or corporation, or private individual.(Q) said:
There will be an excess of funding, although we still won't use it to help anyone, we'll just improve our war machines.
p.s. We should be able to have nothing but pity for people who got wrangled into iraq, even if they are stupid enough to believe they are fighting a "just" war. Those people may be christian, but the american government is not, that is for sure.
cole grey said:
indeed,
Your reasoning is badly flawed. You assume that we are responsible for starvation because we could end the starvation but choose not to. The thing is, God is also able to end the starvation (in fact, it should be even easier for him than it would be for us!) but God also apparently chooses not to end it. So why is it that we're being remiss when we don't end starvation, yet God isn't being remiss when he doesn't end the starvation?Theoryofrelativity said:
Your image of God seems to be like a parent who always puts enough food on the dinner table to feed all their children, but then stands by and does nothing when the older, bigger children steal the food from the small children. When one of the smaller children begs the parent to intervene so that they can get their fair share, the parent says, "I gave you all enough food to feed everyone. If you all can't share properly it isn't my problem." Then the parent sits back and watches the bigger children steal the food until small children starve to death.
That's a very strange image of a "loving" parent! In fact, I’m sure most people (including virtually all Christians) would condemn such a parent as monstrous. Yet for some reason, it never occurs to them that god is engaged in exactly the same behavior.
That's one of the big things that I've never understood about Christians. They all assume that god doesn't want things like, say, people starving to death. If that were the case, then why wouldn't god do something about it?. If a starving person is unable to feed himself and prays to god for food, but god doesn't send any food, what can we conclude other than that god must have wanted the person to starve? If god is infinite and all-powerful, then it should be trivially easy for him to provide food for a starving person - and yet he doesn't. Perhaps you could argue that god would prefer for us to feed each other without his intervention, but why would he still refuse to help when it's clear that his intervention is the only way that starvation would be averted?
Also, it’s worth noting that even though today with refrigeration and our ability to easily send huge quantities of food around the world in planes and ships, that wasn’t always the case. So while you could reasonably argue that humans have the power to end starvation everywhere in the world if we chose to, that argument doesn’t apply to the many, many instances of famine that couldn’t have been helped throughout history that god still apparently chose to do nothing about.
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Nasor said:
First off, I'm not a Christian so cannot comment on their view of God, my view does not involve God as parent figure either so don't know what that reply was all about really? With my view of God, the world as it is, with all its crap, makes sense, but you wouldn't know anything about my view would you, you're just presuming to know?
You presume God doesn't want starvation, and so doesn't exist as if he did he'd end it? Well that makes no sense, he does exist or he doesn't? Make up your mind.
Why assume God doesn't want starvation? Sufferring is neccessary in order to intiate compassion.
Meanwhile we could end starvation and poverty, the lack of success in relief efforts made thus far is lack of good management, pure and simple.
The remedy is there, we just (as had been said already in another thread) spend the money on arms instead.
No, I said that other people (most Christians) seem to believe that god doesn't want people to starve. I also said that this view didn't make sense to me, because it seems unlikely that god would let people starve if he didn't want them to. I was making a general comment about christianity that wasn't directed specifically at you, sorry if there was confusion there.Theoryofrelativity said:
Just out of curiosity, would compassion even be necessary if suffering didn't exist?
The problem with this reasoning is that it forgets that we are the ones who took a comfortable (enough) planet and killed each other, and stole from each other, and exploited each other's resources, and acted completely unfairly and greedily - now we say, "god must not exist because god didn't stop us from doing that to each other", but then if God controlled us we would say, "we don't have freedom, God is a monster incapable of letting humans exist at all because God is forcing them to become robots."
The system is such that we are supposed to be humans and make our own decisions, and have responsibility for our actions - perhaps it would have been better for us not to have existed at all, and have only animals or robots on the planet, but that is not the system - we exist, let's not complain about that.
P.s. nasor, I agree that it is strange to say God is omnipotent but things happen in a way that that is against God's wishes. If God allows freedom, and suffering comes with freedom, then God allows suffering.
The system is such that we are supposed to be humans and make our own decisions, and have responsibility for our actions - perhaps it would have been better for us not to have existed at all, and have only animals or robots on the planet, but that is not the system - we exist, let's not complain about that.
P.s. nasor, I agree that it is strange to say God is omnipotent but things happen in a way that that is against God's wishes. If God allows freedom, and suffering comes with freedom, then God allows suffering.
cole grey said:
well said.
Meanwhile Nasor re 'sufferring and compassion' issue.
There can be no good without evil, think about that for a while, this is not a God ponderance, it's a philosophical one. But the philosophical answer should clarify why sufferring and compassion exist and why each has its place in the world.
Nasor said:
here a useful link I just found! http://www.leaderu.com/orgs/probe/docs/evil.html
quoted from link as taster of contents:
"Probe Ministries
The Problem of Evil
How Can A Good God Allow Evil?
Rick Rood
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The Problem of Evil - Introduction
John Stott has said that "the fact of suffering undoubtedly constitutes the single greatest challenge to the Christian faith." It is unquestionably true that there is no greater obstacle to faith than that of the reality of evil and suffering in the world. Indeed, even for the believing Christian, there is no greater test of faith than this--that the God who loves him permits him to suffer, at times in excruciating ways. And the disillusionment is intensified in our day when unrealistic expectations of health and prosperity are fed by the teachings of a multitude of Christian teachers. Why does a good God allow his creatures, and even his children to suffer?
First, it's important to distinguish between two kinds of evil: moral evil and natural evil. Moral evil results from the actions of free creatures. Murder, rape and theft are examples. Natural evil results from natural processes such as earthquakes and floods. Of course, sometimes the two are intermingled, such as when flooding results in loss of human life due to poor planning or shoddy construction of buildings.
It's also important to identify two aspects of the problem of evil and suffering. First, there is the philosophical or apologetic aspect. This is the problem of evil approached from the standpoint of the skeptic who challenges the possibility or probability that a God exists who would allow such suffering. In meeting this apologetic challenge we must utilize the tools of reason and evidence in "giving a reason for the hope within us." (I Pet. 3:15)
Second is the religious or emotional aspect of the problem of evil. This is the problem of evil approached from the standpoint of the believer whose faith in God is severely tested by trial. How can we love and worship God when He allows us to suffer in these ways? In meeting the religious/emotional challenge we must appeal to the truth revealed by God in Scripture. We will address both aspects of the problem of evil in this essay.
It's also helpful to distinguish between two types of the philosophical or apologetic aspect of the problem of evil. The first is the logical challenge to belief in God. This challenge says it is irrational and hence impossible to believe in the existence of a good and powerful God on the basis of the existence of evil in the world. The logical challenge is usually posed in the form of a statement such as this:
A good God would destroy evil.
An all powerful God could destroy evil.
Evil is not destroyed.
Therefore, there cannot possibly be such a good and powerful God. "
It's a Christian explanation, so not sure I agree with it! But none the less an interesting read!
A good God wouldn't ultimately have to destroy evil. He could have invented it in order to teach humans that they have a choice, and that our judgement will be made based on our choices. Although, an allmighty God could destroy evil, and based upon indoctrinated beliefs, He probably will, no-one could say that He'd have to just because He is able to.
But back to praying, my mother, who's a christian, claims that if she lives a life accordingly to the divine laws put upon man, what she wishes/hopes/prays for, will, in some extent, be made real. Hence the judgement based on actions.
But back to praying, my mother, who's a christian, claims that if she lives a life accordingly to the divine laws put upon man, what she wishes/hopes/prays for, will, in some extent, be made real. Hence the judgement based on actions.
the things we call good could still exist without evil, we just wouldn't have the knowledge or distinction available to our consciousness'. That wouldn't be so bad. Evil things aren't necessary to have around for good things to exist, just to allow us to ponder the difference.Theoryofrelativity said: