Dan56

Christ did demonstrate God on Earth.. He did the impossible and rose from the grave, neither of which is irrelevant or meaningless.

No question is meaningless... But the answers often are. God's existence is only meaningless to the faithless, but He is not a question mark to the faithful. Didn't mean to turn this thread off topic

Not to me. Yes, the Lord works in mysterious ways.

Yes, I'm aware that if you can't see something for yourself that your incapable of believing it. But consider the possibility that something you can't prove could exist. I'm not content with non-provable theories, so I prefer to put my trust in something that answers all my questions. Science doesn't do that. Umm, I believe it was you who said; "Agnostics end it with -- I don't know"... I was simply agreeing with you. And as I've pointed out many times, my comment about Atheist knowing nothing is in regards to nothing of a divine nature.

No, there is no support for "I don't know", nor is there a viable argument for it, which was all I was pointing out.. When you know nothing and believe nothing, there's nothing to argue about.

That was my point... You have your theories and I have my faith, neither of which are substantiated with objective verifiable facts. So as I mentioned many moons aloft; When push comes to shove, no one knows nothing.

When you don't know anything and don't care, you really have no argument? With no position coming out of the gate, your void of content.

Sea shells found on mountains isn't fiction.. A flood seems like a plausible answer.

"Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever" (Hebrews 13:8). So I suspect God would not be wiped out in any cataclysmic event, even if He causes it like in Noah's day.

Perhaps the Truth thrives because its true, or at least perceived to be true. People need and cling to hope, so they hang onto their belief even when efforts are made to disseminate it as being fictitious. Atheism attacks Christianity as much as Christianity attacks Atheism. One is true and the other false, polar opposites don't mix, so your always going to get a conflict. Telling an Atheist that they need to believe may be insulting to them, but so is telling a Christian they shouldn't believe.

This is true... In fact, the bible tells us that followers of Christ would be persecuted and afflicted, so when we are mocked, it kind of confirms our faith.

Okey Doky At 12:01 am on January 1, for the first time ever, Hind Sight will actually be 2020.

You wrote that IF Bob told me, I'd believe him. Jesus did tell us, and I believe him. So the fact that you would believe a made-up fictional character verses myself believing a non-fictional person, makes you what? And people think Christians are delusional?

Thanks....... I feel the same way about Christ as you do Bob; 'I don't need such evidence. His word is good enough'. (no religion intended)

Just curious, can you or have you ever been able to believe in anything without evidence? It seems that the commonality between Agnosticism & Atheism is an inability to trust anything that can't be proven.

If you see no sin in the world, your blind.. If you don't think you have the ability to freely make decisions, your in denial.. If you think your condemned because of something Eve did 6000 years ago, your wrong.. If you don't believe salvation is a necessity, your lost.. And if you think religion is a racket, your 90% correct.. Nonsense is the insistence of accepting a lie because of an inability to discern the truth.

We are condemned to a sinful world because everyone has freely chosen to sin, condemnation is not the result of anything Adam & Eve did, that event just set the stage. If they did not commit the original (first) sin, the next guy would have. Sin is nothing more than disobedience to God, and rebelling against our Creator does require salvation.

Our environment and genetics might influence us, but they don't determine or control our choices. We aren't genetically predisposed to sin, nor does our environment determine our choices. Christ being the perfect example, did not make choices based on his genetic composition, nor did he yield to the physical environment. Our spirit (mind) can rise above what and where we are. God is responsible for the what and where, but we independently determined who we are and what we'll do. Saying that our fate is predetermine by God excuses us of any responsibility, but our decisions are our own, they don't emanate from our genetic makeup nor our we environmentally controlled.

True if not for free-will, but since we are not robots and capable of independent thinking, its not logical to blame God for our woe's.

From a collection of God inspired books called the bible.

Nonsense.. We aren't controlled by our genetics or the environment. Christianity teaches us to overcome the world and flesh by bringing them under complete subjection to your spirit. Your essentially saying that we are all screw-ups and its God's fault. That would only be true if we didn't have brains and free will, that's what separates us from plants & animals. The choices we make are not illusions, they are very real and have consequences.

Sacrificing children wasn't a circumstance God set up. The solution was in the hands of those doing such detestable things. Its called "free will". A God of love, yes.. But He is also a God of wrath.. And many Germans who had nothing to do with exterminating Jews were killed. God did offer a solution to the Canaanites, but they rejected it. The biblical God does not impose His Will onto us, but He does and will react to our choices. We are here to be tested and have the freedom to commit grievous sins, but judgement falls on everyone.

For 400 years, generation after generation, there was no solution.. God being omniscient probably knew that there would never be a solution, so he brought the madness to a screeching halt. There's no solution but one for those who continually rebel against God. Wrath is the end of God's patience. The Canaanites likely sacrificed more children as burnt offerings to Baal over 400 years than God had eradicated, so who was the real villain to the kids?

There comes a time of judgement for everyone.. For 400 years the Canaanite nations (tribes) grieved God, including sacrificing their own children to Baal. Generations of killing their own kids had to come to a conclusion. "God knows the future. God knew what the results would be if Israel did not completely eradicate the Amalekites. If Israel did not carry out God’s orders, the Amalekites would come back to trouble the Israelites in the future. Saul claimed to have killed everyone but the Amalekite king Agag (1 Samuel 15:20). Obviously, Saul was lying—just a couple of decades later, there were enough Amalekites to take David and his men’s families captive (1 Samuel 30:1-2). After David and his men attacked the Amalekites and rescued their families, 400 Amalekites escaped. If Saul had fulfilled what God had commanded him, this never would have occurred. Several hundred years later, a descendant of Agag, Haman, tried to have the entire Jewish people exterminated (see the book of Esther). So, Saul’s incomplete obedience almost resulted in Israel’s destruction. God knew this would occur, so He ordered the extermination of the Amalekites ahead of time. In regard to the Canaanites, God commanded, “In the cities of the nations the LORD your God is giving you as an inheritance, do not leave alive anything that breathes. Completely destroy them — the Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites — as the LORD your God has commanded you. Otherwise, they will teach you to follow all the detestable things they do in worshiping their gods, and you will sin against the LORD your God” (Deuteronomy 20:16-18). The Israelites failed in this mission as well, and exactly what God said would happen occurred (Judges 2:1-3; 1 Kings 11:5; 14:24; 2 Kings 16:3-4). God did not order the extermination of these people to be cruel, but to prevent even greater evil from occurring in the future. Probably the most difficult part of these commands from God is that God ordered the death of children and infants as well. Why would God order the death of innocent children? (1) Children are not innocent (Psalm 51:5; 58:3). (2) These children would have likely grown up as adherents to the evil religions and practices of their parents. (3) These children would naturally have grown up resentful of the Israelites and later sought to avenge the “unjust” treatment of their parents."

If your referring to the Canaanites, there were only ten nations specifically marked for destruction (Deuteronomy 7:1), and they were killed for their sin.. Unfortunately, children are often victims of their parents poor choices. God told them to leave or they'd all die, and they chose the latter. So who was responsible for their deaths? Plus the children were predisposed to generational sin, and odds are that they'd continue in the evil ways of their parents. God only knows the specific reason, but I suspect it was similar to Noah's proclamation, a "Get on the boat or die" scenario?