Is a creationist a creationist because they feel it makes sense?

[Oncedeceived]

Job 39:9-12, Psalms 29:6, Numbers 24:8, for starters.

In the Torah:
Job 39:9-12:

Will the wild-ox be willing to serve thee? Or will he abide by thy crib?
10 Canst thou bind the wild-ox with his band in the furrow? Or will he harrow the valleys after thee?
11 Wilt thou trust him, because his strength is great? Or wilt thou leave thy labour to him?
12 Wilt thou rely on him, that he will bring home thy seed, and gather the corn of thy threshing-floor?

Numbers 24:8:
8 God who brought him forth out of Egypt is for him like the lofty horns of the wild-ox; he shall eat up the nations that are his adversaries, and shall break their bones in pieces, and pierce them through with his arrows.

Psalms 29:6:
6 He maketh them also to skip like a calf; Lebanon and Sirion like a young wild-ox.

I'm sure your god could reveal it to you as well. While we worship different deities, they are still both deities, are they not?

WEll I imagine that God could give me the answer should I so desire and He so desire to do so. Although I do not know what deity you worship.

My god told me they exist.

You asked?

 

[Herman Hedning]

Perhaps it would be more productive, and not to mention polite, to ask her what evidence she has? Imagine if a Creationist came up to you and declared that you have no evidence for one of your beliefs.

Hmm, happens most every day on this forum, doesn't it?

 

[automan]

Perhaps it would be more productive, and not to mention polite, to ask her what evidence she has? Imagine if a Creationist came up to you and declared that you have no evidence for one of your beliefs.

'Be more productive and polite'!!!
I could ask her every day until she died and she would not be able to provide 'one shred' of evidence because no evidence exists,
and creationists can say what ever they like, I do not believe in any gods, I have NO beliefs,
and it is my opinion that religion is for fools, so be my guest say whatever you like,
I believe in ME, when I die, I die, I don't need to believe in anything else, just me.

 

[Oncedeceived]

No, you don't have evidence God exists, you and millions of others believe God exists,
and you all want God to exist, you all need God to exist, you all hope desperately that a God exists,
but there is a difference between evidence and belief.

There is a difference between belief and know as well. I know that God exists and that He is the God of the Bible.

I have evidence that He is God, the Christian God.

I do not necessarily need God to exist, I mean if He didn't it would be unnecessary.

I do not need to hope for His existence, He has revealed it to be so. Why would someone need, want and hope that something untrue was true to the point of deluding themselves to believe it. That just doesn't make sense to me.

If you had evidence I would also believe, and believe me, if you had evidence everyone would believe,
if you had evidence we would be fools not to believe.

The problem is that the evidence is evidence that can be dismissed just as God can. That is how free will works. If you had undeniable, conclusive evidence of God's existence free will is lost. You would have to believe, you would have to know that He is real.

I know He exists from many things in my life, but God leaves an open door so that anyone can walk away as well. As you have heard on this forum alone, many people who once believed they had experiences that were from God only later when doubts crept in they explained it all away. It is a choice.

I could give you all the same experiences/evidences in my life but without you being the one living them and experiencing them it would be rather empty.

 

[Oncedeceived]

'Be more productive and polite'!!!
I could ask her every day until she died and she would not be able to provide 'one shred' of evidence because no evidence exists,
and creationists can say what ever they like, I do not believe in any gods, I have NO believes,
and it is my opinion that religion is for fools, so be my guest say whatever you like,
I believe in ME, when I die, I die, I don't need to believe in anything else, just me.

Ok, so when you die if you find that God really did exist, then what? I mean really...if God exists (I mean the Christian God) what will you do?

 

[atomweaver]

Quote:
Thus began my own path to agnosticism; realization that God, if He truly is omnibenevolent, would give each Soul an equal chance at coming to know Him, results in the rejection of all of the worldly instances of religions asserting "One Trueness".
That would be true if the Gospel and the Bible were unaccessible to the world, which is not the case.

Have you ever actually investigated how true this is? Only about half of the people born to the world are ever exposed even once to Christianity, and that number is shrinking with time (Muslim faith is growing faster). So, only every other soul is damned from birth under protestant christian theology. Is that omnibenevolence?

Quote:
If you accept that the precepts of US Creationism are a necessary element of belief (let be generous, and say that 25% of the US holds this to be true) your odds of being born into a life which has even an inklnig of a chance at resulting in savlation are

300 million *0.25/4.5 billion = 1.6%
Creationism is not a necessary element of Christianity.

There are quite a few Creationists who would disagree...

[/quote]The whole position of Christianity as far as salvation goes is that one accepts Christ as their Savior, believes He is the Son of God who died on the Cross for the sins of every man, women and child in the world.


Quote:
Omnibenevolence? Nope
Do you have all the knowledge of the universe? [/quote]
No. But I know with 100% certaintty that too few souls are exposed to any one single religion for any One, True religion to have exclusive purview over salvation and the afterlife. If God truly values each soul equally, He would provide a means for each to be saved.

Do you know everything there is to know about the universe and everything in it? If not who are you to tell God who in the Christian world view does that He is or is not?

...and yet, despite also lacking omnipresence, those in the Christian world view have no problem asserting their view on origins as "better" than evolution (ironically, when evolution isn't even an origins world view). Clearly, omnipresence isn't a neccesary component to having a point about origins.

 

[Oncedeceived]

I'll be back in just a few minutes I have to go and do something real fast.

 

[Merlin]

OK,
.

let's all accept that pink unicorns exist

 

[automan]

Why would someone need, want and hope that something untrue was true to the point of deluding themselves to believe it. That just doesn't make sense to me.

This the Atheists point in a nut shell, why would any sane person do this, that is what baffles us all.

Ok, so when you die if you find that God really did exist, then what? I mean really...if God exists (I mean the Christian God) what will you do?

There is NO GOD (any god) so I have NO FEAR, when I die , I die, Period.

You are shouting your fear of death from the roof tops, that is what you fear most, what if there is a GOD.

The one that put that fear in you is the one to blame.

Please take my word for it, there is no God, and my word is as good as any one elses,
if you can believe them you can believe me.

 

[arensb]

Hmmm...
Evolution: lightning struck a pond, or some such, and eventually things started walking about
Creation: some entity (we call Him God) applied laws of physics and designed biological organisms.

Creationism seems more reasonable to me.

Leaving aside the "evolution = abiogenesis" strawman...

There's a joke that says that there's a question on the officers' exam in the UK that asks how to dig a trench. The correct answer is, "Sergeant, dig me a trench!"

Likewise, if you're a three-star general and you want a suspension bridge built across a valley, all you need to do is call up the Army Corps of Engineers and say, "build me a suspension bridge!" So obviously, a suspension bridge is a very simple thing, right?

Except that the description above hides a lot of complexity: you need the Corps of Engineers, and the thousands of people in it. You need steel beams and cables, and bulldozers, and the industrial base to manufacture them, and the mines for the raw materials. You need surveying equipment. You need the command hierarchy to coordinate work. You need the money to pay for it all, which means you need a government to raise taxes. You need to educate the engineers, which means that you need universities, and researchers and teachers, and so on and so forth. So there's an awful lot of stuff that has to exist and work before you can call up the CoE and simply say, "build me a bridge".

"God did it" is the same thing. For it to work, you need a god capable of imagining the life form that will be created, pick a set of physical laws, and so on and so forth. That requires a brain or something equivalent. You also need some way to create a universe with the given laws of physics, or change the laws in an existing universe. In short, the word "God" is a very compact representation for something really, really complex.

If you're going to argue that life is so complex that it could only have been created by an even more complex entity, then you have to ask how God came to be. If life could only have been created by God, then God could only have been created by God2, who could only have been created by God3, and so on and so forth.

As complicated as the current abiogenesis hypotheses might be, at least they have the advantage that they work with things that are known to exist, like water and lightning and clays and whatnot. "God did it" postulates the existence of an entity for which there is no evidence, with unknown properties and composition. So it really doesn't explain anything.

 

[Wiccan_Child]

'Be more productive and polite'!!!

Yes. Take the moral highground, or you well be seen as no more informed than the people you debate against. If you get into shouting matchs and make unjustifiable statements ("She has no evidence! Ever!", etc), then you are just being hypocritical.

I could ask her every day until she died and she would not be able to provide 'one shred' of evidence because no evidence exists,

Demonstrate why no evidence exists for her beliefs.

and creationists can say what ever they like, I do not believe in any gods, I have NO beliefs,
and it is my opinion that religion is for fools, so be my guest say whatever you like,

You contradict yourself. You claim to have no beliefs (a suspicious stance at best), and then state a belief ("religion is for fools").

I believe in ME, when I die, I die, I don't need to believe in anything else, just me.

That is your perogative, but methinks you have a chip on your shoulder; how is that statement relavent?

 

[Wiccan_Child]

You asked?

Yes. I was curious.

 

[arensb]

If you had undeniable, conclusive evidence of God's existence free will is lost. You would have to believe, you would have to know that He is real.

According to tradition (see, for instance, Milton's "Paradise Lost"), Satan had undeniable, conclusive evidence of God's existence, the same way that you know that your coworkers and your boss exist, yet still chose to rebel against him.

So does Satan have more free will than you or I do?

 

[Oncedeceived]

Have you ever actually investigated how true this is? Only about half of the people born to the world are ever exposed even once to Christianity, and that number is shrinking with time (Muslim faith is growing faster). So, only every other soul is damned from birth under protestant christian theology. Is that omnibenevolence?

Rejoice, those who have not learned of Jesus Christ or have never been exposed to the Gospel will have God as their judge. He will judge them on their lives alone and how they lived them. Who better than God to know just how just and how merciful He is.

There are quite a few Creationists who would disagree...

I guess I'll take that up with them should they so desire.

Quote:
Omnibenevolence? Nope
Do you have all the knowledge of the universe?

No. But I know with 100% certaintty that too few souls are exposed to any one single religion for any One, True religion to have exclusive purview over salvation and the afterlife. If God truly values each soul equally, He would provide a means for each to be saved.
[/QUOTE]

He has Christ. Before Christ He had the Jews and the Torah. The Bible is the most produced Book in history. The Bible has reached the farthest places to reach the most people ever.

God is just and He is merciful and a perfect judge for all His creation.

...and yet, despite also lacking omnipresence, those in the Christian world view have no problem asserting their view on origins as "better" than evolution (ironically, when evolution isn't even an origins world view). Clearly, omnipresence isn't a neccesary component to having a point about origins.

Asserting views is how the world turns (totally a figure of speech).

What do you mean by omnipresence isn't a necessary component to having a point about origins? I don't understand.

 

[Oncedeceived]

This the Atheists point in a nut shell, why would any sane person do this, that is what baffles us all.

Exactly!! There are very intelligent sane people who are Christians. I always wondered how they were sooo sure, now I know.

There is NO GOD (any god) so I have NO FEAR, when I die , I die, Period.

I know there is, the Christian God and when you die you will find out. Period.

You are shouting your fear of death from the roof tops, that is what you fear most, what if there is a GOD.

What would there be to fear? Dying? I have to die anyway, as you do. If it is as you claim, I die that is it. Period. I won't know anything that happens after I die. But if it is as I claim, and God does exist as I claim, then dying isn't the end and you will have to face God. Period.

The one that put that fear in you is the one to blame.

You so misunderstand, it is sad really. I haven't fear in me. In fact, fear in all things has lessened since I realized that God is real.

Please take my word for it, there is no God, and my word is as good as any one elses,
if you can believe them you can believe me.

Please take my word for it, there is God and He is the Christian God; and my word is as good as any one else's. If you can believe me. Why, because I do care for your salvation. I do care what happens to you. If you knew for sure that God existed and knew that some will perish if they do not accept Christ what would you do? Keep silent and let it be; or would you to the best of your ability try to help?

 

[Oncedeceived]

According to tradition (see, for instance, Milton's "Paradise Lost"), Satan had undeniable, conclusive evidence of God's existence, the same way that you know that your coworkers and your boss exist, yet still chose to rebel against him.

So does Satan have more free will than you or I do?

Satan wants God's position. In fact, many do. It was not that Satan didn't believe in God, He just feels that He wants God's power and glory for himself.

 

[Oncedeceived]

Yes. I was curious.

 

[arensb]

Satan wants God's position. In fact, many do. It was not that Satan didn't believe in God, He just feels that He wants God's power and glory for himself.

Well, sure. What's your point?
Are you saying that God doesn't want people to know for sure that he exists?

 

[Oncedeceived]

Well, sure. What's your point?
Are you saying that God doesn't want people to know for sure that he exists?

He wants to make sure that you have a choice. He wants us to love Him on our own terms. If there was no way around it and you knew God existed whether you wanted to or not you would have to do as He said...He's God. But if you do what God wants and do so based on your own experiences with Him, you can love Him because of Him and not that He is God and you must worship Him.

 

[Wiccan_Child]

He wants to make sure that you have a choice. He wants us to love Him on our own terms. If there was no way around it and you knew God existed whether you wanted to or not you would have to do as He said...He's God. But if you do what God wants and do so based on your own experiences with Him, you can love Him because of Him and not that He is God and you must worship Him.

My dear, if I had conclusive proof that your god existed, I would still be ethically opposed to it. I know Hitler existed (for given values of 'know'), yet I am not inexplicably infatuated with the man.