This, I think, is the only god that holds, since it is the only god that can be logically justified.
*buzzer* EEEEEEEEHHHHP! Wrong! God cannot be logically justified! Know why? Because our pitiful human minds are very much undeveloped to really grasp and understand just how great God is. You can get a feeling for what God is, but our minds can't truly wrap around it or delve deeper into it because it would truly be information overload.
I think it makes most sense if god is female, because only women can give life.
Not surprised this will come from an atheist who knows little to none about God and is only out to disprove His existence. Again, WRONG. God created
man in
His image. Women just came along second to serve as the future of
mankind. So, quite possibly God has no gender, but He is referred to as a
Him throughout the Bible and He sent His
son to the earth to wander among
man. God is not human, but I'm pretty sure He's leaning more toward the male side than the female side.
the female god still lives on in the expression "Mother earth"
It's just that - an
expression. God is not the earth, He
created the earth, which in turn sustains our lives.
It should also be pointed out that an omnipotent god must be either androgyne or sexless.
LOL, hey, that's what I said! =)
To say that god is universe - by getting knowledge of the universe we get knowledge of god - is to redefine the meaning of the word god.
To say that God is universe is not redefining the meaning of the word God, it is putting what God is capable of into simple terms for people to 'get an idea'.
Such a god does not hear prayers.
And where is the proof to back up this statement, I wonder?
If god is not omnipotent there is nothing that prevents him from being a product of the universe.
The fact is that God IS omnipresent, which makes this whole paragraph nul in void in the argument of His non-existence, really.
Many people justify their faith with god as an explanation.
I don't count under the 'many' then.
Let's say that god is the meaning of life, what then is the meaning of god?
God is not the meaning of life - that makes no sense to me whatsoever. God is love, and He is the meaning of love. Life is what WE make of it. We were given that choice,
verstaan?
If god has a nature, who created that nature?
God was never created. He is and always has been. He has no creator because He IS the creator.
If god created time and space, how can god exist without it?
God perceives time differently than we do. Time has a different meaning to us than it does to God. God doesn't exist without it, God exists
with it.
Since creation is an event in time, how could god create time? and who created god? To answer these questions god must be almighty, or else you can't explain them.
Ah, do you see the light now? / sorry, that came off as sarcastic and I don't mean it to be.
He cannot be 'good' or 'evil' or, indeed, have any subjective characteristica. If god is all good, he cannot do evil things and cannot be almighty. Most people would object and say that good can do evil but chooses not to do it. Well, if god is all good he can't choose to do evil things, can he?
No, this guy is kind of on the mark and off the mark. God is a being of good. Because we were created in His image, and therefore given free will to choose which paths we will take, I'm sure that means God has free will to choose what goes and what doesn't as well. God might be capable of evil, just like all of us, but He chooses not to be.
God can't be both almighty and good.
Unless David Hume knew God intimately, I'd say he doesn't know what he's on about and is trying to make sense of something he doesn't understand.
Besides, if only god can create he must have created evil.
Again, this is why I stated before that God also has the freedom of choice between good and evil.
If somebody else (the devil) created evil, how can one know that god, and not Satan created the universe?
Satan did not create evil. God created everything -
everything - and like us, His followers had the option to choose to be with Him or against Him. Satan chose to disobey Him, therefore choosing against Him, therefore becoming God and all His followers' enemy, and therefore spreading his opposition to God throughout mankind, and this is why we have atheists and Christians today. If you wnat to go further into this, I'd suggest picking up the Bible and reading Genesis and talking to a priest about it, because I'm not here to preach.
Well if there is a being that has either failed or not tried to communicate with us that being is not worth worshipping either, so the ontological evidence against god holds, even without complete knowledge of the world.
God used to appear to and speak to people back in the day. He was forced to become a little more subtle about it as humans evolved. Why this is, I don't know, all I can truly say is that God still speaks to me, all the time, but I only hear Him when I choose to listen.
Pray, and ask god to provide you with a clear proof for his existence within a week.
This is total BS and I'm totally against it. You don't
ever test God. Unless you're trying to prove a point to nay-sayers and you believe in Him and you know Him, you do NOT ask God to prove His power/existence just for the hell of it, just like you don't ask Him for a sign of some sort. This is BS and I'm just gonna skip over this paragraph cos it ticks me off to no end. Oh ye imbeciles of little faith!
God is defined to be infinite, in which case it is not possible for there to be anything other than god because "infinite" is all-inclusive. But if there is nothing other than god then either god cannot be said to exist for the reason just explained, or god is the known world, in which case, by definition, god is not a god.
That kind of went right over my head. I don't get what this guy is trying to say.
The number of things that are impossible to do are almost infinite. If god were to be almighty he would be able to do them, but it's impossible to do so.
Fact: nothing is impossible for God.
I'd say that everything which violates the laws of physics are logically impossible and thus omnipotence is logically impossible. Besides if omnipotence is a relative quality there is no way to tell omnipotence from non-omnipotence. For omnipotence to be a valid expression it must be absolute, but we have no objective criteria to measure omnipotence so the word itself is useless.
This is what I meant when I said earlier that we might get an 'idea' of how great God is and what He is, but our minds can't wrap around it, can't make sense of it, because there is just too much information to take in and delve into to really understand it. This is a prime example of someone trying to get it but not being able to really take it further.
Also, if god knows everything, he knows what he will do in the "future" (in any dimension, not necessary the time dimension). He must have known that from the very start of his own existence.
Of course He knows. He even told us in Revelations about what's going to happen. Duh.
Thus god's actions are predestined. God is tied by faith, he has no free will.
GOD is the one who predestined His OWN actions. He chose the time and place and the why's and what's and hows of the situation. HE did. So saying God has no free will when He CHOSE the way He wants things to play out is absolute silliness. To put it nicely.
If you had a free will, god wouldn't know what you would do tomorrow and wouldn't be omnipotent.
God gave us free will and He knows the future. What's more is He knows each of us, as individuals. He knows how many hairs you have on your head and He knows when you will be born and when you will die. He knows what life you will live. He knows us better than we know ourselves, whether you believe in Him or not. THIS is why God knows what we will choose to do and why we would make the decisions we do at whatever times in our lives. We don't know much, but God knows everything.
If god is not created, then everything mustn't have a creator, so why should life or cosmos have one?
That makes no sense. God is not human - He is infinite and almighty. He always was. He created everything. If God had been created, then that means there must have been a lineage of creators long before Him, but then who created them and why are they no longer around? God was not created or born, and so He cannot be destroyed or die = infinite.
If everything has a source and god is that source, then god must have existed without it before he created it.
Spot on.
So if god created time and space, he must live outside of time and space.
I don't believe this is the case. I have the impression that God lives with time and space, that He's connected to those elements just like He's connected to us. If you consider that God lives with
us, that He sees all we do, hears all we do, feels what we feel, knows our thoughts, lives
within us, I don't see how the theory of Him living outside of time and space like some disconnected and cold entity can be true.
Prayers would be totally meaningless. We would already live in the best world possible, and any prayer would be to doubt the wisdom of god.
Not all prayers are answered, and some take a while before they are. Prayers are not meaningless. It is our way of communicating to God, He encourages this greatly from His followers, because He wants us to talk to Him, to get to know Him, to put in the effort of showing our appreciation and love for Him. That is why we pray, to acknowledge His existence. Just because your prayer isn't answered doesn't mean God doesn't hear you.
Even worse: For every prayer said, god has not acted, or else the prayer had been undone. This means that the more people have prayed, the more bad things in the world have persisted.
Huh? :huh:
A much better way to change the world is to do it yourself. Then you would know that it was you who made the world better. The effect of prayers are not scientific provable, whilst the effect of actions are. Instead of praying you should set to work at improving your situation.
This is the belief of an atheist, of course. From a Christian POV, true, you can't just sit back on your butt and expect all things good to fall in your lap. God despises the sloth. You have to work to get what you want, and sometimes that road is really hard. Take celebrities, for example. It takes work to become successful. A lot of them end up turning to drugs/alcohol because they need an escape from the pressures, because it was a lot harder than they thought it would be, and they have no one to turn to so they turn to substances instead. If you have God in your life, you'd turn to Him in prayer and rant and vent your heart out, knowing that you won't be judged, knowing that you are being listened to, that there is compassion and understanding, and you walk away from that feeling unloaded and sometimes, if you talk long enough with Him, He'll give you peace.
They somehow feel that their lives are meaningless without god, so they choose to close their eyes to evidence against the existence of god.
I would still like to see this evidence against the existence of God because so far this guy's reasoning has been about mankind doubting His existence, not proving His non-existence.
For a christian you accept the "truth" according to your moral, and then have to be strong in your faith to keep your believes.
This is not the case. For non-believers who become Christians, they don't know the morals or laws or whatever to be one when they find God. They discover the "truth", they understand it, and if they chose to make it their own personal "truth" then they can pick up the morals and cues of Christianity. And anyway, so if I'm believing a total lie, then how do you explain the method and way my prayers were answered? Was it just 'coincidence'? Did
I make it happen? So when I kept forgetting my school book at home for a whole week, was it me that willed my teacher to be so sick she didn't come to school until the day I finally remembered to pack my book? So, when I failed to find a house and was making arrangements to move into a spare room with my family of three at a friends' house and trying to source out storage units for our furniture, and I got a call the day before we got kicked out of our apartment that the deal for one of the houses we wanted had fallen through and that it was now ours, was that me
willing that deal to fall through? Was I just lucky? When I was really in a pinch, did I just get lucky? I doubt it.
When many religious people are confronted with criticism of their religion they convert to atheism or agnosticism.
Then they weren't truly believers to start with.
If god is so mysterious, how can we know anything about him? Through the Bible? How do we know that the Bible and not the Koran or the Vedha books, for example, are the words of god?
God is an open book. He welcomes you to get to know Him, He wants you to know Him. The Bible is one method, prayer is another, allowing God into your life is yet another. If the Quran, I believe it's spelled, does not deviate much from what the Bible teaches, then it is simply another form of God's word.
Considering the cruelties that have been made in the name of god, how do we know that not all religions are made by Satan?
All religions that deny God is the almighty are made by Satan. If it opposes God, it is sin, and instigated by Satan.
One has to give up his free mind and follow the authority of a dictator.
No, you don't. God teaches us that humans can never fully be trusted, that all your trust must be put in Him because He will never abandon you and He knows what is best for you. Human error is a very clear example of why people can't be fully trusted. We are flawed beings. I say this because the point I'm getting at is that, yeah, sometimes even our religious leaders, such as our priests and pastors and such, are at fault.
Christians deny gay and lesbian people to come into church because they're 'wrong' and 'against Christian morals'. True, but then
Christians are meant to be fishers of men, eg. we're supposed to win over non-believers to God's side. Denying them the privilege of knowing God is not going to get them into heaven. Another bother for me is that Christians are quick to judge others - you're gay so you're going to hell, you're atheist so you're going to hell, you're government so you're going to hell, you watched that Blair Witch Project movie so you're going to hell, if you commit suicide you're going to hell, etc etc etc.
What these Christians don't realise is that we were not given the staff of judgement. We are not God and so we have no right to speak out such foolisness over others. I mean really, is that supposed to win those people over? It wouldn't win me over, that's for sure. Also, God WARNS us that we will be judged by the rod that we use to judge others. We will be forgiven our sins as we forgive those who trespass against us. It's in the Our Father in Heaven prayer. You reap what you sow. Can the message God is trying to tell us be any clearer?
A lot of churches are very uptight about these things, and they believe the right things, but they don't act righteously on it. I've walked into a few churches where God was not present, where it was all about how you present yourself and how you live your life. Human error. If God had been running the show in most churches, He would throw the doors wide open for all the gays and lesbians and murderers and prostitutes and gamblers and alcoholics and druggies, and He'd kick all the rest of us out. God's message is pretty clear - if you know Him and you know what He desires of you, you'll know that it is the non-believers, the 'bad apples' of society, that He is focussed on saving, and so should Christians be too. And on top of that, God is love. You live with love, you act with love. Love your neighbour as you do yourself. Sacrifice yourself for another human being, is the greatest act of love there is. Jesus proved that. This is why I don't believe priests and popes to be dictators on how to live your religious life. How many of those priests have abused children? Those are the false prophets - the ones who preach but don't walk the walk. People can't be fully trusted.
I have several friends who are Wiccan. I don't go around flaming them for believing in the godesses, and I'm not completely narrow-minded and stupid either. I know what Wicca is. I did my research, I know enough to actually become a Wiccan. I choose not to because I believe in God. I have a few friends who are Islamic. They're wonderful people. I know their religion, and I've read parts of the Quran (only parts because I'm still trying to get through reading the whole Bible) I have a couple of gay people in my family. My cousin has been living with his boyfriend for over 18 years and they have a son together (my cousins' from a previous marriage). My best friend, who I would die for, who is in all sense of the word my twin sister, is lesbian. No, I don't condone their actions or beliefs, I do believe it's wrong. That doesn't mean I'm going to try to sway them over/ tell them they're wrong/ announce they are going to hell/ completely avoid them. Jesus was friends with the 'bad' people in society. His disciples were 'bad' people. Paul was gay, I mean c'mon! I follow in Jesus' footsteps, because I am a Christian. I don't know, am I really the only one in this friggin world who believes this is the right way of following God? Anyway, the keyword here is LOVE. I love my friends, and I want them to be saved so I pray for them. Jesus said we must live by example. He lived by example, and I'm following His example. God hates sin, He doesn't hate people. We are taught to hate what is against God, but the act, not the person, because that person is infinitely precious to God, and should be infinitely precious to us who are saved as well.
Okay. So, I tend to go into a sort of rant when I discuss the topic matter of people who 'supposedly' share my religion but don't really believe. Sorry about that. ._.
