So when you read the NT, you hear Jesus speak to you? Or is it when you read scripture, you feel a presence. I'm not sure what you mean here?
I am not that lucky to feel God's presence. What I meant is I get what God want us to do and some attribute of God from His message, the Bible.
Why do you conclude the existence of God? "You can't get something from nothing?" "Without a God, life has no intrinsic meaning?" Other? This question is surely not meant to be condescending. I'm actually quite curious how you (know) there must be a divine singular creator, verses the many other probably conclusions?
This come a long way, since I was an atheist. I was interested in computers when I was young, and bought a book about the internals of the CPU. after a summer I finish the book, from start to end, learned how the gate works, how the adders works, how memories work, and how cpu work in general. The shocking part of it is I found there is nothing speical in the CPU, it is just a piece of machine, and from that point on I start to realize that it is impossible to create conscious from material. No such model exist. There has to be something that attribute to a spiritual domain to have something of a conscious. This idea became stronger and stronger as I develop an interest in programming and start to design games and various programs, it is very plain (I would assume it is also common with other computer science graduates) that all those computers only fake conscious.
That is a very good question. in fact initially I perfered Buddhism to Christianity/Islam/Judahism due to that, some of the stuff in the OT is just out of my taste. But as I grew, I read from history or from first hand experience how awful humans are, how we keep trying to do good things either with good intension or pretended intension, that so many good initiatives became horrible (the idea of communism is great till you actually try to use it, no matter in what sociality), that I realized how great the command of God is.How did you determine that your believed God is 'good'? As I'm sure you are aware, you can certainly pick out many parts in the Bible to contradict that notion. But I am a moral relativist, so what do I know? So I guess I'm asking, is it that 'God is good' because anything God instructs or commands must be 'for good'? Or, were you able to discern this conclusion on your own accord?
I don't find the message consistent though. So how do we determine which one of us is correct? But even if everything you say was true, (i.e.) the book expresses pure love and is consistent throughout, how does such writings manifest or prove the existence of a singular God? Couldn't humans write such stories and assertions without there ever being aware of an actual God? Meaning, is it possible that all is written by humans, and their own thoughts?
Could be, but once from my above deduction that I decided there is a God, your above statem is moot.
Couldn't I say the same thing about the many other religions you've declined, which you might have never even heard of, in which you decided to reject without appropriate investigation? Most of us have not given all assertions a fare shake, as there exists too many to do so... Not including the ones you may never have heard of...
If God exists and want his message known, then His message will be a big one, as you can see today Judism/Christianity/Islam combined dwrfs all. I already told you why I turned down Buddhism etc, and Christianity is a good extension/explanation of Judism. To me anything that claims we can save ourselfs are fake religion, since history has proven again and again we can't.
Yes I have. Before I started to read the Bible, I was brought up believing it is true - (indoctrinated). I was too intellectually lazy to actually read the claimed source. But after I started to read it for myself, and see that some events in there do not appear to jive with my 'known' reality, I started to question... When the answers received were not satisfying, along with never feeling any presence from 'above', I started to research for myself...
For me, it is about the following...
- Claimed events, which are actually falsifiable, do not correlate with later 'provable' or 'falsifiable' discovery
- The collection of books do not appear consistent, (especially from the OT to the NT)
- I have never witnessed anything supernatural, which makes me skeptical
- I prayed for 30+ years and nothing; no feelings, no nothing. Instead just wishful thinking alone...
- Nothing written in the Bible appears to be forward thinking or forwarding knowing, (no foreknowledge given which might at least demonstrate a 'higher intelligence' was demonstrated to at least conclude such messages were given by something or someone other than mere human beings)
My question for you is, how do you (know) when you read the Bible, you are not just reading a collection of stories written by humans, and humans alone?
I'm not, that's why I'm on here All I can use is my own reasoning. And yet, all I'M asking for, is LESS than most. Which is... The knowledge of existence to this claimed God. I asked for decades. God appears to be the best hide-and-seeker imaginable. There appears no logical reason to remain hidden. This would not ruin 'free will'. I could live the rest of my life knowing which God is the real God, and still decide whether I wish to accept, love, and follow (or) reject Him for numerous reasons...
Writings from a book, with 'facts' or assertions which do not correlate with 'testable' human discovery does not appear to be a righteous path to convey 'truth'????
The moral argument does not sway me one way or another... If Yahweh exists, Yahweh could state to 'rape babies daily for fun'. If Yahweh exists, and Yahweh is proven to exist, then the moral implications are, quite frankly, disconnected from the reality that humans would need to adhere to God's word, regardless of whether or not we agree. You know, the whole 'Euthyphro dilemma' thingy.....
I came from opposite side as you . I argued with my Christian friends for years, and finally come to terms and found once you put it logically the Bible is actually superior to all. There is no book like the Bible where God laid all our failures to us by the smartest people on earth, the Jews, all the stories there reflects to the things we are having today, even though we now have cell phones, computers, airplanes, we are repeating the same mistakes before, as there is nothing new under the sun. God definitely exists, and the bad thing is, God is so far ahead of us that we are not able to understood why He did some of the things (there is a research that states if IQ spread of 2 people is over certain number they 2 will not be able to comunicate effectively, not sure the source but I saw this from time to time), just look at the universe and you know the existence of God is undeniable. I watched a documentary about CERN and one of the scientist, who is atheist, states that he can't understand why the parameters of the world is so perfectly aligned, and he has to use theory of multi-verse to explain it, so that our world is only one in an infiite of randomness
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