The apostles co-existed with Jesus. They were the original members of the church. You weren't there at the time. You must have faith. No faith, no salvation.
There's no evidence the apostles, or Jesus ever existed. Putting "faith" in a situation like that is irrational.
Please provide Scriptural evidence for your assertion. Try Ephesians 2:8 "For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God:"
Matthew 16:27 - For the Son of Man will come in the glory of His Father with His angels, and then He will reward each according to his works.
Matthew 19:17 - If you want to enter into life, keep the commandments.
John 5:29 - And shall come forth; they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of damnation.
2 Corinthians 5:10 - For we must all appear before the jugment seat of Christ, that each one may receive the things done in the body, according to what he has done, whether good or bad.
Revelation 22:14 - Blessed are they that do his commandments, that they may have right to the tree of life.
I can keep going if you want more examples. Scripture clearly states that works are also required for salvation.
Losing one's faith isn't the same as saying that God doesn't exist after experiencing the Holy Spirit. Many call themselves Christians, but if they haven't received the Holy Spirit they were never saved. If they say they knew God but now deny Him they are lying; either in the knowing or in the denying.
Repeating your no true scotsman fallacy doesn't make it true the second time around.
How could the Holy Spirit not exist if one has already received the Holy Spirit?
You are asserting they have received the holy spirit without evidence. In reality, if the holy spirit doesn't exist, then nobody has received it and you are mistaken. You are not even considering that possibility.
What matters is how CHRIST defines Christian, not man. Unless you are born again you will never see the kingdom of Heaven.
Do you love your family?
You didn't get the analogy. I said "It's like saying you were a once a ski instructor but you've never seen a pair of skis in your life." It doesn't matter how many people have been skiing before, if you haven't you're lying.
I got the analogy, you didn't get my rebuttal of it though. My point was you can test if someone is a ski instructor, you can't test if anyone has received the holy spirit, or if the holy spirit even exists. Therefore the analogy is a bad one.
When you speak of God, you capitalize it; not only as a reference to the deity, but also because it's used as a proper noun.
It would be correct to capitalize it if I were referring to a specific being. Since Christians can't even get the definition clear of what a god is, I'm forced to refer to a vague concept. Capitalization therefore is not necessarily justified, similarly to if I'm talking about the gods of ancient Greece.
That being said, it's proper to capitalize Zeus. Even though we know he's fictitious, there's at least a clear definition of what he is (i.e. it's not a magical spirit or life force). Kinda like Darth Vader or Chewbacca.
1 Samuel 15
1 Samuel said to Saul, I am the one the Lord sent to anoint you king over his people Israel; so listen now to the message from the Lord. 2 This is what the Lord Almighty says: I will punish the Amalekites for what they did to Israel when they waylaid them as they came up from Egypt. 3 Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy all that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys.
4 So Saul summoned the men and mustered them at Telaimtwo hundred thousand foot soldiers and ten thousand from Judah. 5 Saul went to the city of Amalek and set an ambush in the ravine. 6 Then he said to the Kenites, Go away, leave the Amalekites so that I do not destroy you along with them; for you showed kindness to all the Israelites when they came up out of Egypt. So the Kenites moved away from the Amalekites.
Now that you see things in context, you know why things happened the way that they did. If you read further, you will find that Saul disobeyed God, and that there were consequences to the sin as well.
I'm fully aware of the context of that story, and I'm flabbergasted that you are trying to defend it's morality.
Here's the deal: If it were true that the Amalekites waylaid the Isrealites and deserved punishment, then it would be morally justified to punish the political leaders or generals who committed the crimes.
What doesn't make sense at all is your supposedly loving and moral god is directly ordering the Israelites to massacre not only the innocent men, but the women, children and infants. To top off the utterly ridiculous barbarity, he even has them kill off the livestock, who was surely completely innocent.
To put it in a modern context, when we won WW2, we were justified in trying and punishing the German leaders as needed. The Nuremberg Trials is the most famous example of that. However, your God's "righteous" punishment would be the wholesale slaughter of every single German citizen, man or woman, child and infant (even those who opposed the Nazis), and then kill off every farm animal, household pet or other living creature in the country. That would be a hideously immoral punishment, even taking into account the crimes carried out by the Germans.
Basically what it comes down to is you're trying to rationalize the morality of genocide and ethnic cleansing. Take a look at yourself in the mirror, I'm sure you're a better person than that.
You demonstrate that you neither know nor understand.
Just because we don't share the same viewpoint does not mean we don't know, or understand. I would say given examples like above that you've been blinded by your faith.
I bet none of them were carried out by the Southern Baptist Convention. The results you get depend on the questions you ask. Many atheists are quite familiar with specific verses taken entirely out of context with the sole intent of putting the Scriptures in a bad light.
The one that springs to mind first was a study taken by Pew Research Forum. They found Atheists, Jews and the Mormons were the top three in religious knowledge. If I remember correctly Catholics had the least knowledge of any demographic.
Yes, they are. I changed the wording because every self-indignant atheist has at least a few different wordings in his quiver at all times. I've even lifted definitions from an "internet scientist's" own posts and true to form he said I was wrong. Then he posted different phraseology that said exactly the same thing.
I was referring to your "country bumpkin" way of presenting them, as they were almost unintelligible. If you want to put forward a claim, at least use proper language.
Sorry, but it does. If the universe is constantly degrading it can't be eternal. If it isn't eternal it had a beginning and will have an end. If it had a beginning, then before that beginning it didn't exist. Internet scientists all have their own definitions for the LoT and most of them refuse to admit that there is any such thing as laws, but they don't believe in anything else so why would they believe in science?
I don't know why you keep arguing that the universe isn't eternal. I believe I've made it abundantly clear that I accept that the universe had a beginning, and I accept the Big Bang model.
Right, and before that beginning nothing existed.
There's the problem, you can't demonstrate that. Just because the universe had a beginning does not mean that something couldn't have preexisted, for example the multiverse hypothesis. And before you go off the rails, I'm not asserting that the multiverse is the answer, however given the evidence we have, it's a possibility.
I know you've been listening to lies about origination, but try to follow here.
If something comes into being, then before that time it didn't exist.
That's correct. However, just because something came into being doesn't mean that nothing before it could have or did exist. I don't believe a true state of nothingness is possible.
If the universe didn't exist, then there were no stars. Stars produce heat. In the absence of all heat we have absolute zero.
And again, you're speaking to the conditions we see within the universe. They don't apply to a situation before the universe came into being.
Therefore, the condition of the universe before the existence of anything was absolute darkness in absolute zero temperature.
That's an unjustified claim. We don't know if there was a time when things didn't exist. If Einstein was correct, then time started at the Big Bang, "before" that point is therefore a meaningless term, similar to something being north of the north pole.
If a multiverse (or some other kind of place outside of our universe) exists, it may have it's own causally disconnected spacetime, laws of physics, or anything else. We can't say with any certainty how such a place would be, however we have no reason to assume the laws that apply to the universe as we know it would apply there.
From that state, nothing could come about; nothing could happen; nothing could originate. Energy didn't exist before it existed, so in the absence of energy we have neither energy nor matter.
And again, you're only making an argument that a new universe can't come into existence in our currently existing universe. There's no reason to assume those rules apply to something outside of our universe. There's also no reason to assume a state of pure nothingness ever existed. In fact, since we're talking in temporal terms (which started at the big bang), we can demonstrate that a state of nothingness never existed.
This is consistent with natural law, which precludes a natural origination. Origination is not possible. There is no provision for it in natural law.
I agree, a universe can not form within our currently existing universe. However, that's irrelevant to the discussion.
You may theorize that in a sea of nothing some nothingness somehow became matter and dark matter; gaining mass and gravity from nothingness as positive energy separates from negative energy. You may further theorize that the positive energy increased in mass and density until it became the mass from which the universe would eventually be created.
I don't know why I would.... that's not what the science supports. The only time I read of scenarios like that are during Christian strawman attacks.
You may even pretend that there are other universes out there, but such wild suppositions are not supported by the laws of physics no matter how much second hand pipe smoke a professor blows.
Actually, inflation theory (which is empirically backed) would seem to require the existence of other universes. It's not at the point where we can confidently say that is the case, however the evidence certainly does point that way.
Previously explained. Increasing entropy means the universe is winding down, which means that the matter within cannot be eternal.
Again, nobody is claiming the universe is eternal.
WRONG!!!
The Second Law of Thermodynamics states that "in all energy exchanges, if no energy enters or leaves the system, the potential energy of the state will always be less than that of the initial state."
source
Uh.... Ok, so the definition I gave was "the entropy of an isolated system never decreases". Lets compare that to what you said.
"in all energy exchanges, if no energy enters or leaves the system" (i.e. an isolated system) the potential energy of the state will always be less than that of the initial state." (Entropy increases and will never decrease)
But lets try out your next definition....
Second Law of Thermodynamics: In any cyclic process the entropy will either increase or remain the same.
source
In any cyclic process (i.e. an isolated system), the entropy will either increase or remain the same (i.e. never decreases).
So seeing as my definition agrees with your definitions, would you care to point out exactly where my definition was wrong?
It doesn't hold only that entropy never decreases, it asserts that it can never reverse itself; never go from disorder to order.
Seeing as entropy reversing itself would require it to decrease, it does hold to that.