How is one's belief in Evolution any different than another's belief in the bible?

That's an oxymoronic statement right there. The very fact that you've put FAITH in that picture is what prevents you from doubting it.



This is also a total farce. It's true that today AFTER all my studies and realizations I would not want the Bible to be true. Why should I? If you believe in what the Bible says it's about a God who cast countless INNOCENT people into an eternal hell fire. It's about a God who places BETS with a supposedly demonic angel where human souls are the poker chips! It's about a God who is mean to people who supposedly already love him and are already his LOYAL SERVANTS. To believe in the Bible you truly need to believe that God is so egoistically hung up on TESTING whether or not people LOVE HIM that's it can't be described as anything other than truly SICK.

Not to mention the FACT that according to the religion overall, God is supposed to already KNOW what's in our hearts and there is NOTHING we can hide from God!

Can't you see the oxymoronic situation here? A God who is supposed to KNOW what's in your heart and yet he doesn't TRUST anyone?

But this wasn't the REASON that I gave up on the Bible. Actually back when I rejected it I WANTED to believe it! I didn't think about all these gory details at that time. It was my intention to TEACH IT!

So you are way off base trying to portray me as a skeptic who never wanted to believe it. That's simply a completely fabrication on your part and you even KNOW IT. You've heard my history before, to try and portray me now as someone who never wanted the Bible to be true is downright deception and nothing short of dishonest.

Originally I wanted the Bible to be truth, moreover I BELIEVED it was true! But that was BEFORE I READ IT!

Yes, let's face it, it's NOT IMPORTANT to read the Bible to become a Christian. In fact MOST Christians have no clue what's even in the Bible. They just accept Jesus Christ as their Savior and go on their merry way. If they do read the Bible they DON'T QUESTION IT, then just say, "Well God must have his reasons, he knows best".

But I wanted to TEACH the Bible! Telling people "Well God must have his reasons" every time someone asks me to explain something did not cut it for me. Besides people are always saying that the Bible contains ANSWERS to every question. Welll, surely if that's true then it must contain answer to questions that people might normally ask.

The TRUTH it that it DOESN'T. That's the TRUTH.

No one can even tell you why God can't forgive people unless they've butchered an animals. IT DOESN'T SAY in the Bible why God is APPEASED by blood sacrifices. Now that's a question that should be explained.

I can explain it! It's because the authors weren't even being ORIGINAL when they made it up. It's no different than any other Mediterranean Mythologies.

Also, there's the issue of why the "Jesus Story" was told hundreds of years before Jesus was born in so MANY different forms. The people who WANT the Bible to be true are trying to claim that the Devil had people make up these stories so that modern generations would see this and think that it's just a plagiarized myth. But that would mean TWO THINGS. First, it implies that Satan knows what God is going to do BEFORE God does it, and secondly it implies that God never KNEW that Satan had done that since he never bothered mentioning in the Bible that those stories existed.

The only reason I take about not WANTING the Bible to be true is when people come at me from the point of view of pure FAITH. Why would anyone WANT the biblical story to be true?

Why would you WANT it to be true? The story claims that all of humanity fell from grace from our creator and that he had to have his son slaughtered just to save our totally UNWORTHY butts. Why would anyone WANT such a story to be true?

I think clearly any SANE person would be truly saddened if the Bible IS TRUE. There most certainly is nothing to 'Rejoice" about if it were true. If Jesus had to die on the Cross it's YOUR FAULT! That's what the Bible is saying!

Why would you want to that to be TRUE ON PURE FAITH? That's a faith issue, that you have never addressed in all the times that I've asked it?

Why do you WANT it to be true that you've failed your creator and he had to have his son brutally murdered and publicly humiliated to SAVE your butt?

Why would you WANT that to be true?

And would you be disappointed if you discovered that it wasn't true?

If you found out today in no uncertain terms that the Bible is entirely made up by man would you be disappointed? If so why? Do you like the idea that a God had to have his son butchered to pay for your sinful ways?

And if you don't like that picture then why believe it on PURE FAITH ALONE?

Why fight so hard to support such an ugly picture of not only man, but of God as well?

Surely you can see that MAJOR PROBLEM with the WHOLE PICTURE.

You supposedly have an ALL-PERFECT creator creating a PERFECT world and then sin miraculously comes into this picture from NOWHERE!

That's absurd already. If there was a perfect creator that created an imperfect universe he'd have no one to blame but himself. The idea that it's because he gave people FREE WILL just doesn't cut it. Giving people FREE WILL doesn't automatically create evil.

In fact, if God's heaven was supposed to be PERFECT then why did a fully their of God's angels not like it?

Clearly it must not have been PERFECT from their point of view. So now we're struck with a 'subjectively perfect' heaven that some people think is perfect and others do not. There can be no such things as ABSOLUTE PERFECTION if we have so many angels disagreeing that it's PERFECT.

The whole story is an oxymoronic story Eljay. Trying to discredit people who recognize this by trying to claim that it's just because they don't want it to be true is truly a dishonest tactic.

To the people who are interested in REASON I hold that the Bible and the Biblical God is UNREASONABLE. Therefore if we are to believe in the Bible we must believe that God is UNREASONABLE.

When reading the Bible all we need to do is ask ourselves the following two questions?

1. Would a truly all-wise, loving God have written or done the things the Bible claims?

2. Would men who are trying to put fear into their readers make this stuff up?

When I do that I find myself answering NO to the first question constantly, and YES to the second question all the time. So which question is more likely to be true based on REASON?

To the people who claim that we must have FAITH, I say the following:

Why would I want to have FAITH that our creator is at war with a measly fallen angel? Why would I want to have FAITH that all of mankind has fallen from grace from God? Why would I want to have FAITH that the only way to obtain the LOVE of this God is to believe that he had his son slaughtered on a pole to pay for my pathetic rebellious behavior? Why would I want to have FAITH that if I can't find the story believable this God will cast me into a pit of eternal damnation even though I'm actually a good person but just couldn't buy into this horror story?

Why would I want to have FAITH that God is UNREASONABLE?

Yes, you are right about that. Now that I look at this unreasonable book in GREAT DETAIL for over 40 years of LIFE, I've come to the final conclusion that I don't want it to be True. It's a horror story about a God who will send innocent people to hell just because they refuse to believe that God is an insane madman who's at war with a fallen angel, and keeps changing his mind about how he wants to deal with humanity (i.e. one moment he's flushing them away in a global flood, and the next moment he's having his son nailed to a pole so he can forgive them their sins).

Hey, as far as I'm concerned BOTH of those solutions to his problems are EQUALLY SICK!

This is a story about a supposedly FATHER IMAGE God who has failed MISERABLY as a father and now he's taking it all out on his children. If he were a human being he's be in jail on child abuse charges.

And you expect me to accept this story ON PURE FAITH when there is NO REASONABLE reason to believe it?

That's crazy. The story is as absurd as Greek Mythology if not more absurd. Yet you don't seem to have any problem at all chalking Zeus off as a lost cause.

Why do you cling to this absurd picture when it's basically proven itself to be anything but divine.

Abra;

I did not say that you never wanted the bible to be true. I simply said you don't want the bible to be true. This post here demonstrates it by your own words - and it's not the first time you've said it. You're just the poster child for it. I really couldn't care less how you came about your conclusion - or whether you made the decision 30 years ago, or last year. You prove my point. You don't want the bible to be true.

It matters not what pretextual arguments you attempt to create to support your view - it never comes from context anyway. So be it.

Well, I don't know about you but I asked questions and never took anything the teachers told me as truth just because they said so.

The FACT is that if you ask how they KNOW that the earth is 4.5 billion years old they will explain to you in great depth how they know that it's TRUE.

The scientific evidence is overwhelming. It comes not only from methods of dating ancient rocks, but it comes from the observations of how geological processes unfold on the Earth. It's also verified by astronomical observations of how solar systems form.

It's also verified by the processes of nuclear physics and how the sun works, and they clearly have that down pat beyond any shadow of a doubt.

You can rest assurded that the Earth is indeed 4.5 billion years old. And if you question it all you need to do is study all the difference sciences and see how they arrived at their conclusions.

In order to reject the evidence you'd basically have to denounce all of science and REASON. Either that or claim that God made the universe to purposefully decieve us. But then you'd be suggesting that God is decietful.

To claim that science is a mere faith-based method of inquiry is truly ludicuous Eljay. I can't believe that you could even suggest such a thing.

And this comes from someone who's trying to sell a truly absurd picture of a God that has NO PROOF of DIVINE CONNECTIONS WHATSOEVER?

You can believe in unseen angels with wings. Demons with pointy tails that are at war with God. A God who supposedly inspiried a male chuavinistic book both throughout the Old Testament and then again though Paul in the New Testament?

A God who supposedly had a son who DISAGREE with his previous teachings?

All this is based on what? A book that was written by Isaelites and was clearly focused on having God be on THEIR side in all their wars and rejecting all other nations as HEATHENS?

Oh please.

And you still have never even addressed the question of why you would even WANT to put your FAITH in such a crazy picture of a jealous God who hates non-believers and will cast them into hell and had to have his son butchered on a pole to pay for YOUR willfull disobedience toward him.

Surely since you are so vehement about placing faith in this story you could come up with a reason why a person should WANT it to be true?

Why should we want to believe that we are at odds with our creator and that he had to have his son slaughtered to pay for our WILLFUL disobedience of him?

I don't even feel that I've been WILLFULLY disobedient to God so the idea that he had to have his son nailed to a pole for MY SAKE makes ABSOLUTELY NO SENSE to me, much less be something that I'd WANT to believe on pure faith when the evidence against it being true is totally overwhelming.

Why should I WANT to have FAITH in this picture?

And if I don't WANT to have FAITH in it, then what other reason could their be to put my FAITH in it?

It's got to be a WANT-based religion. Unless you're just scared to death that it MIGHT be true and you're cowering down to the threat that if you don't put your FAITH in it you'll be eternally PUNISHED.

But that would just be to confess that you worship it out of FEAR and not FAITH at all.

To even ask this question suggests that you have absolutely NO CLUE how the scientific method of investigation actually works.

All you're really attempting to do here is claim that Science is entirely "Faith-based". But that's asburd.

You also seem to be looking at it from the opoint of view of uneducated students in a classroom that just place their faith in their teachers and text books.

That's a TOTALLY ERRONEOUS representation of what science is.

Science is NOT just a a bunch of students placing faith in what teachers say. Science is the ACTUAL PHYSICAL INVESTIGATIONS that lead up to the results that are printed in the textbooks.

If science were merely faith-based, then we'd have a whole lot of scientists in disagreement with each other.

In the case of something as well-established as the 4.5 billion year age of the Earth, there is no disagreement in the scientific communitity.

It's not "Faith-based" at all. It's "Evidence-based".

If the bible were true that would be horrible.
A god that kills babies and commands people to kill their own childern.
You have to be a bit sick in the head to want the bible to be true.

Three years at St Charles Bormino Seminary, five years in the Jesusits and I never, repeat never met anyone who took the Bible as literal truth or anything near truth, but only as faith (this is what we choose to believe)literature and poetry. And I met people who dealth with the boy in St Louis whom they based the book/movie The Excorist on. Yes they believe in a mystery and things beyond our comprehension, but not that the Bible is the unchangeable word of g-d.

I hate to have to break this to you - but God kills everyone. This is a demonstratable - "SCIENTIFIC FACT". The bible says it is the "soul who sins who will die" - and that "all men sin"
We observe that everyone dies.

So what's your point?

I hate to have to break this to you - but God kills everyone. This is a demonstratable - "SCIENTIFIC FACT". The bible says it is the "soul who sins who will die" - and that "all men sin"
We observe that everyone dies.

So what's your point?

Scientifc Fact?



There is nothing scientific or factual about a god.

Wow. I mean, really. Scientific Fact? That is laughable.

Yes everybody dies, but it is more likely that the corrupt writers of the "holy" text noted that everyone died, and put their own reasons in there to explain it away. Since it is easier to take the ignorant approach, and say "God kills people" then it is to try to actually find the real reasons behind the cause of death.

Abra;

I did not say that you never wanted the bible to be true. I simply said you don't want the bible to be true. This post here demonstrates it by your own words - and it's not the first time you've said it. You're just the poster child for it. I really couldn't care less how you came about your conclusion - or whether you made the decision 30 years ago, or last year. You prove my point. You don't want the bible to be true.

It matters not what pretextual arguments you attempt to create to support your view - it never comes from context anyway. So be it.

Same with you. Comprehensive reading. The scientific fact is that everyone dies. Please tell me that you figured this out.

God ALSO can't and won't go against man's free will either...

otherwise ,God also would be going against His

Word!!!!