RoderickSpode

Since you are speaking about the Biblical God it would require the Bible to be factual. 

That can't be assumed. It has to be proven.

i agree to that extent. But the Christian god to Christians can easily exist... for them. 

There is no argument. This entire world is the result of imagination. Finite humans don't understand what that means to any kind of infinite being. 

Indeed we do or at least some of us do.  But anything that comes along to free up our time is only an advantage.

Which sadly enough is now being slowly and stealthily being eroded & wiped from the human brain. Thought crime is now more prevalent in modern times and society now than it was when "god" was telling us what we can't think.

What make you believe it is any different? The bible is a book, I personally believe it to be a book of ancient history and I have studied it as such.

This is not a victimhood thing from you, is it?

Not if you look at it from the standpoint of the theist. The gist is that we are made in the image of a god, which wouldn't necessarily include all of his traits and genetic make up and bad habits such as his  despot tendencies.

Well you have something there in that the larger the population then one cannot talk to everyone at one time and more importantly one cannot listen

to all of them at the same time. Look at it as a small firm that has just a handful of employees. I can speak to these people on a one to one basis individually or all in one assembled collective group in a extremely short amount of time giving my instructions of what is to be done and listening to their responses etc

etc. 20 years down the line and my little firm is now a company, and I cannot and do not have the time to talk to all of my now

thousands of employees all at once so I simply select a charge hand and or a foreman as a go between. I think you get the message. In the case of the so called "gods" they selected rulers as go betweens ;  kings . Do not get these go betweens confused with priests. The function of the priests
was to only be there to serve the gods everyday wants and needs and whims, they were nothing more than goffers and had no power outside of the "sacred perimeters of the "gods", there was no such thing and as "religion". But  eventually the priest usurped the Kings & Pharaohs  and took full
controlof almost everything in ancient times, though some power was regained and the duality of King and priest came into being. As we have here in the UK today. Our Queen serves the dual role of Head of the church of England and Head of the Monarchy.

This is under the assumption God is good, God exists by the Bible being a trusted source?

Can you tell me why I should trust what the Bible says? 

If we don't have a framework that gives us facts that can be tested then I ain't going to make claims about it. I ain't no professional nor are Theologians because they have yet to test any of their claims. I'll stick to God's existence as the claim.

Not really. I assumed God existed but wanted to see how people can come to God being good but I didn't see it. This can also be God's existence topic if you want.

Where is your reasons?

Praying to the UR makes no more sense than praying to the Higgs field.  If you like, why not call the Higgs field God?  Mopac thinks that if he calls reality 'God' then atheists are duty bound to deny it exists!

So is the UR God?   No.  The UR has some of the features people have traditionally associated with gods, but it is not the God Mopac worships.  That God does not exist.

From the arguments that I have seen from past I concluded that. I am willing to hear a God argument if you have one since that is part of the topic. The love part should have been a question can we talk about God's existence then we talk. I much rather it be formed as a question to talk about a specific aspect of the topic then something else entirely which you hope I understand but if you read my responses from Mopac  I didn't. 

The problem is that if anyone gives a reason why they believe God is good, all you will do is ask for proof of his existence.

I don't believe goblins exist. If I tell someone I don't believe they exist, and then tell someone that believes they exist that they just assume they are bad, wouldn't that sound a bit odd? I might say it sarcastically (Ha ha, are you profiling goblins like a racist?).

In other words, it appears you're using this question as another way of demanding proof of God's existence.

I should have said that for this topic I'll assume God's existence but not the any specific Religion to be true instead simply God and now you would have to give me an argument or you can speak about how God does existence. Your choice.

Maybe you haven't told me.

If we don't know how it is done how do we know how it is done? Circular yes but that is the very question you are asking. Well I like the stances to be from information gained through professionals in fields so that it is isn't based on my belief more so someone's academic background and researching which led to those answers.

The paper has been peer-reviewed. Make sure it as close to the current.

You very first comment was not about the topic at hand. Stop lying about who was at fault about the derail.

Something with science. I'll keep it that open in hopes you can find something. Something with science relates to a credible scientist of present year who has evidence of God's existence or what you can imply God existing with. 

Evidence is what I care about not being so open minded that I don't care about evidence. 

I don't think we can know. 

No.  I hope one of our Jewish members will back me up when I say that salvation in the Christian sense is a minor matter within Judaism.  Judaism is far more concerned with 'this life' than the 'next life'.  James is not saying we should be kind to widows and orphans so we go to heaven -  he is saying we should be kind because that what god wants.   Unlike Christianity doing good is an end-in-itself, not a means to personal salvation.

The book of James explicit contradicts Paul's 'justification by faith' on other occasions,such as

2:24 You see that a person is considered righteous by what they do and not by faith alone.

and

2:26 As the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without deeds is dead.

My contention is that the book of James suggests that there was a 'strain' of early Christianity that was much closer to traditional Judaism than 'Paulism'.  (Certain passages in acts also sugest the same thing).   And if James was the brother of Jesus, was that version closer to what Jesus taught than Paul's version?

I don't think we can know.   Certainly I don't know anything that settles it - if any body else does have anything (other than quotes from the bible!) I'dcertinly be very interested in it.

I don't care about the Bible which has yet to give evidence to prove its validity. Come back to me with evidence. God is not love or good because he doesn't exist.

I'm sorry, but you'll have to prove that God doesn't exist. If God definitely doesn't exist, then it's a non-issue. The real issue in terms of your stance would be more along the lines of just God existing being an assumption.

If you're open to the possibility of God existing, then that's a different story.

James, not John.   Of course they had many shared beliefs, but they clearly differed on the matter of works v. faith.   We read in the bible there were other disutes between Paul and others over dietary laws and circumscision.

1. Humans imagine God is a man. (Even if they do not believe in God)

2. Humans are afraid of suffering and non-existence. (Death is an instant)

I don't think you are right about 'the interpretive individualism of Protestant thought'.  Catholicism recognises two sources of religious authority - the Bible and the Church .  Protestantism tends to 'scriptura sola' so the protestant church has no power to add or take away from what is in the text.

What protestantism does not do is give individuals the right or power to interpret scripture as they see fit.  Under protestantism there is a correct interpretation and  determining the correct interpetation remains firmly in the hands of the Church, not the individual believer.   The only difference is that the Cathlolic church does not have justify everthing with chapter and verse as it claims to have independent authority.

I'm not sure why you're asking this question. If he doesn't believe in any god, he's by definition an atheist. If someone says they don't believe in god, that's what they're called. Now, if someone says they're a Christian, I call them a Christian. That seems fair, right? What right do I have to say well you SAY you don't believe in god, but you do it differently than I do...you go to church, therefore your atheism is invalid (even as it might be totally true and they go there for some sense of community, or for family obligations, or out of fear of ostracization, etc).

Except what Christians like you and Mopac do, is you hear them say they're Christian, decide you either don't like whatever they think Christianity is (maybe it's stoning virgins, maybe it's accepting gay people, YMMV), so they're NOT Christians. You don't like that the Christian may discriminate against Muslims, and you say "Well they only SAY they're Christian, they're NO TRUE CHRISTIAN, therefore they're not in my club and I'm still cool." You guys know that's exactly what no true Scotsman is, right? Then you say, WITHOUT HEARING THE CONFESSION THAT THEY'RE AN ATHEIST, that statistics are flawed

because the people who sit in your pews aren't REAL Christians. RIght?

I made no suggestion that atheists are more moral, just that statistically, they are less likely to be involved in brawls. Because there are less of them. By

ratio. This is how math and statistics works, dude. If you had a little league game in America, specifically in Colorado, where the MAJORITY of the attendees were atheist, you'd have what's called a statistical anomaly. I'd bet at least 60% of the people in that brawl were identifying as Christian, based on data. You're hoping most of them were atheists, because it makes Christians look as bad as those rioting buddhists, running roughshod over Asia, I guess?

The other two, I notice, you have no objection to :). There's plenty of places to find people who believe in god getting into brawls, you know. A very large percentage of this country claims to be Christian, so chances are pretty good if you're seeing a brawl, then more than one Christian is involved. I bet most of the people at that Colorado little league game last week that got into a brawl over a 13 year old umpire's call were Christians, doesn't that prove my point? 

And I quote “eternal conscious torment”.

Buddhist don’t believe in permanence.

 I think my overall point is being missed, I’m not Buddhist.

Wow, is that on TripAdvisor? :-) How do you find these tours?

You know as well as I do you can replace "buddhist" with "Christian" and see all the same behavior, right? And you can keep the money in America by doing so. Want to see a bunch of brawling Christians? Go to a roadhouse in Alabama around 1AM on a Saturday, chances are pretty good. Christian scam artists...like the ones flying around in their private jets living in mansions they call pastoral centers? Violent religious intolerant Christians...they're a dime a dozen nowadays.

They don’t believe in the same hell many Christians do of eternal conscious torment. The Buddhist taught the four noble truths which is all about eliminating unnecessary suffering. Is there corruption in the Buddhist religion? Sure. It is made up of people. I was talking about the fundamentals of the religion and not the people who believe in it. People are either good or they are bad regardless of their religious persuasion.

Do you mean to say that the hell in Buddhism is not a torment?

Buddhists don’t tell people to serve their Deity or burn in hell. They simply want to eliminate unnecessary suffering. Christianity seems only to create suffering, guilt, judgment, and bigotry.

Actually, Buddhists do believe in hell. Even McDharma Buddhists acknowledge this.

Eliminate suffering?

If you don't think there are violent and corrupt Buddhists, you may want to take a Buddhist tour of Asia sometime and see the brawling monks in Korea, the Buddhist scam artists in Thailand, violent and religious intolerant Buddhists in Burma, etc.

Nonetheless:

Evolution can be just as much a Godists principle as it can be a Scientists. 

And as far as I am aware. Mr Darwin remained a Godist throughout his life.

Different is one is observable and another isn't. Your analogy doesn't work when a loudspeaker can be observable whereas God cannot. All you have given here is conjecture nothing tangible like the God you believe in. 

I grew up in a church that had “the truth”. If you did not follow the plan of salvation as taught in the Bible as they understood it you were not going to heaven. This argument works great on those who accept this position. Arguments are not one size fits all. The point of pointing out the many denominations is this: if the God of the Bible is the one true God, he did a terrible job at explaining exactly what he wanted us to do. It is also confusing why a god would need to use fallible humans to communicate to us what he wants. If God is powerful enough to build Universes, he should be able to communicate in a way that is not subjective to personal opinions. 

First off, the first question I would have to ask, can God communicate on an individual basis? There are many people, including myself, who knows what God wants us to do, because God spoke to us individually. An example of what I mean, a person on a loudspeaker we can say is effectively
communicating to a broader range of people than someone having to rely strictly on their voice alone. The person on the microphone's voice is enhanced enough to where people can hear them from 2 or 3 blocks away. But, he has no control as far as choosing, or limiting who he communicates with. Some people seem to think that God cannot communicate individually, or for some reason wouldn't.

As far as your church, yes, some churches and denominations have a strict view on salvation. Some think that someone cannot be saved if they don't
speak in tongues for instance. Or, they must be baptized in addition to acknowledging Christ as savior. But the majority of Christians, particularly in
America, understand that differences in doctrine does not separate believers.  John 3:16 among some other verses are catalysts for salvation for many believers because this often seems to be where the supernatural awakening takes place. (Or, the Born Again experience). And we don't really
know the dynamics of how this happens. When someone receives Christ, and they have the experience to go with it (which by the way varies tremendously), doctrine or definition of salvation is pretty meaningless since they just encountered the savior. And since it's tough to understand as
far as it's dynamics, there's more of a universal acknowledgement of salvation in the traditional sense, than, say, the tribulation timeline, eternal security, age of the earth, etc.

Slippery slope. Could not the same be said about the bible? Let's solve this issue: please give me the clause in the constitution that refers to where we're a Christian nation. One reference to the Christian god will suffice.

Hmmm...nothing, huh? Maybe it's in the bill of rights. Any references to any god there?

This is awkward. How about the Declaration of Independence...oh, here it is. One reference. To...'Nature's God." Why didn't they write the Christian god if they intended to create a Christian nation? They do refer to a Creator...is that specific enough to distinguish between, say, Jesus and Ra?

These are the founding documents of the country, and none of them refer to anything Christian...it seems a strange way to create a Christian nation, doesn't it?

Can you define what you mean by 'deification' here? Would you say the 'alpha male' hero character from 30's movies was also a deification of that archetype? And do you mean the CHARACTER was named Eggbert Hofenmeyer and the CHARACTER was named Tex Jones? Cary Grant was an alpha male actor...named Cary. 

Without a question, I'm left to only imagine what you might be getting at here. Did you like it better when "Scientists" were nerds who got rescued by the former high school quarterbacks? I don't understand what you're objecting to. Also I don't understand what your boner over 'evolutionists' (these are typically called BIOLOGISTS if they're actually in the science community) is, I mean can you give me an example of where this ever even comes up in movies? I'm thinking of like Jurassic Park, where they talk about evolutionary components of dinosaurs, etc., but no one says "Oh yeah, because Darwin rulez!" in that movie. 

They'd likely start with successful wing designs and emulate them. Not scrap all of that and design wings that need to work way harder than, say, a condor's wings. There's just not very much intelligent design demonstrated in intelligent design. Another example: 4 in 5 people will eventually have some sort of back problem. If you designed something with an 80% failure rate, it's a poor design. I'm up for an ID topic if we can think of a good way to discuss it that isn't both of us going "nuh uh!" to the other one. 

I've never seen anyone develop successful bee wings. But to answer the question about alleged poor designs, it doesn't really matter in that we all die. What good would perfect design be if we all die? Perfection would imply immortality. So the real question would be why aren't we immortal?

Do you include mortality as poor design?

I'm asking you how to make sense of a benevolent and loving god inventing cancer that kills children, as the two things do not match. But you're better off leaving it, you're right, because I bet your answer is something like "that's man's fault," which then does not account for your god knowing without question that man would bring childhood cancer into the world and still let it happen. It's one of many things in Christian doctrine that don't make sense, we can do that all day, it'd get boring. Every one of them comes down to "God's only good and love and wisdom! All the bad things are because of the fall!" WHICH GOD DESIGNED guys. Please read the book :). 

The subject of intelligent design, and thus the designer makes no suggestions of morality. Is your argument that if there is a creator of any kind, including deistic, or even extra-terrestrial, it would be evil by default since it allows childhood cancer? If the teacher tells you he is not claiming any identification of who the creator/designer is, then you proceed to ask him how a loving god would allow for childhood cancer, and then refer to Christian doctrine, don't you see a potential problem there?


And yes, I know why you brought up children with cancer. It's the same reason why if I made an off-the-cuff remark about Hitler that had nothing to do with his beliefs, you would most definitely, absolutely, refer to his Catholicism. I don't think you could possibly help it.