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Why doesn't God reveal himself in a logical, evidence-based manner?

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oi_antz

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because they saw Jesus as a heretical false prophet, not because they wanted to "seize his inheritance".
6 or half a dozen? The estate in question is the "kingdom of God". It rightfully belonged to Jesus and it was clear through His presence that this was so. Nicodemus is an example. The problem is that the world (that's us) did not humiliate it's self sufficiently to accept Jesus' authority. As you rightly said, Jesus appeared much different to what the world was expecting a messiah to be. Yet another example of the human trying to put God in a mind-sized box.
 
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6 or half a dozen? The estate in question is the "kingdom of God". It rightfully belonged to Jesus and it was clear through His presence that this was so.
oi_antz, it's clear to you and believers of your religion. It's not clear to anyone else. How would you take it if ANOTHER self-proclaimed messiah came along and tried to replace Jesus' New Covenant with a New New Covenant? Not very well, I wager. Even if this new messiah wowed everyone with his miracles, you'll have to admit that the source of his powers are just as likely to be from the devil as from God. In fact, given that he tries to abolish God's laws and replace them with new ones, it's more likely that he's from the devil rather than from God.

As you rightly said, Jesus appeared much different to what the world was expecting a messiah to be. Yet another example of the human trying to put God in a mind-sized box.
Except that the messianic prophecies were given by the prophets Isaiah, Zechariah, and Ezekiel, not arbitrarily imposed by the Pharisees or anyone else. When Jesus claimed to be the messiah but was not of the bloodline of David, failed to return Israelites to their homeland, failed to "swallow up death forever", the dead did not rise, nations of the world neither looked to Jews for spiritual guidance nor acknowledge the wrongs they did to Israel, did not oversee the rebuilding of Jerusalem, did not bring about global peace, et cetera et cetera et cetera, what exactly did you expect the Pharisees to make of this self-proclaimed messiah?
 
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oi_antz

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All in good time. Matthew 26:
Do you not see that our modern perspective gives us greater capacity to understand the life of Jesus?
Have you noticed how confusing Jesus' words were to the people He addressed, yet today we understand them clearly?
 
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elman

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It seems reasonable to me that a Creator with the power to create our physical universe would be an overwhelming presence. If such a being were to present Himself to us in all His power and glory, would we truly be able to chose to not obey anything He asked us to do? Would we be able to love such a being as opposed to acting as if we did? I find it very reasonable for such a Creator to put us in such a position as we are in and ask us to becoming loving beings. We are able to do that without the imposition of the presence of a being with such power.
 
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Just because you have figured out how to tell someone how they should conduct themselves or issue challenges in question form, does not mean you are asking questions. Reset and try again.
Just because you're unable to answer my real question and are hence forced to frame my question as something else entirely, doesn't mean I'm not asking what I'm actually asking. While your inability to debate beyond what your rigid textbook defense has taught you and how lost you appear when you wander outside of it is somewhat cute and amusing, your desperate insistence on forcibly rephrasing my question into something I never said is can only be described as boorish and petulant.

I'd tell you to reset and try again, but the desperation with which you try to reword what I really said is a dead giveaway that you have no sensible reply, so I won't bother.

If you are truly looking for an answer to your question, reset yourself and go back to my original response dealing with this question.
I will when you actually present an answer that addresses the question, instead of dodging it.

My good man, please do not confuse your determined and continued ignorance regarding the historical method with some sort of "undefined variable". While I could direct you towards some resources, I don't have enough privileges to post links yet, so I'm afraid you'll have to go through the arduous, back-breaking, time-consuming process of entering two words into a search engine and finding the links yourself.

With that said, it doesn't really matter whether you choose to educate yourself or not. Any self-respecting debater knows that he needs to do his own homework instead of resorting to wilful ignorance about a topic yet insisting on talking about that topic. Know that if you deliberately choose to continue being an ignorant boor sticking to your completely nonsensical argument of "historians automatically classify any text mentioning Jesus as a religious text!" instead of educating yourself so as to be able to provide any intelligent discourse regarding the historical method, you'll simply be ignored from this point onwards.

Can you name me one historically reliable, non-canonical gospel that was rejected by the church for being secular?
 
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Brenda Morgan

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If the Apostles knew that Jesus is God, I have always wondered why Judas sold out Jesus for 30 silver coins. It doesn't compute; taking money to sell out God?
 
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In response to your bolded questions, I would propose the answers yes and yes.

Would we truly be able to choose not to obey? I think it's important to keep in mind that Christians, Jews, and Muslims all claim to know that God certainly and absolutely exists, yet have no problems with disobeying his commands all the time. For Christians, I point to the Westboro Baptist Church as an example, and even in this thread we can see Christians bristling with hubris and pride (not you, though). For Muslims, the example of radical terrorists are only all too obvious. Even in your own Bible there are various stories of people who knew with absolute certainly that God existed, having seen him with their own eyes, yet chose to disobey: Adam and Eve, the Israelites, King Solomon, et cetera. So yes, I'd say we would still truly be able to choose not to obey.

Would we be able to love as opposed to acting? Again, I would propose yes. If we can choose to not obey, we can certainly choose to love as well, or choose to pretend to love. God gave us free will, after all.
 
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elman

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There is a vast difference between claiming to know God exists and actually standing in the presence of a being that can speak the universe into existence. There are some indications of people being in the presence of God in the Bible and being overwhelmed by His presence. I think that more likely than the stories you refer to where they were not. I agree in the presence of such power we could through fear pretend to love.
 
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elman, would you agree that Adam and Eve are examples of (wo)men who stood in the presence of God, yet chose to disobey?
 
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No it is just a story--not really related much to actually standing in the presence of God.
When you get down to it, almost everything in the Bible is "just a story". And given how Adam and Eve stood in the presence of God every day in the Garden of Eden before they were cast out, I fail to see how you conclude that it's "not really related much to actually standing in the presence of God".
 
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maizer

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elman, would you agree that Adam and Eve are examples of (wo)men who stood in the presence of God, yet chose to disobey?

Apologize for butting in the middle of a discussion, but I always thought this may be one of the reasons why God doesn't reveal himself in a thundering universe shaking sort of way. Adam and Eve experienced everything God had to offer, but you could argue they seriously lacked the characteristics of what makes a good human being. Patience, forgiveness, courage, etc etc.
 
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norswede

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God has shown himself in many ways. Through miracles, through visions and through dreams, through creation and most obviously through prophecy but those with closed hearts refuse to see these signs. millions of people throughout the world have experienced events so incredibly powerful that they have devoted their lives to Him and many shows on the paranormal show that there are millions of others who have experienced paranormal activity that can't be explained by science. These of course don't prove the existence of God, but they prove that there is a realm outside of the one we live in but of course all of this evidence can't be proven by mainline science so it must not be real. God is spirit, therefore energy. Science proves that we are made up of energy and that energy cannot be created or destroyed. This is proof of the possibility of God but only those who's brains (which science admits are advanced computers) are willing to receive his energy (As psychics receive energy), they will never be able to prove his existence until he chooses to return and show the world his power which according to prophecy will happen very soon but those who's pride refused to accept the evidence that was all around them will not be dealt with kindly.
 
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paul becke

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He actually has revealed his personal relationship with each one of us in a thoroughly scientific way. The physics, the testing and peer reviewing, has all been done. Everything except the extrapolation of this divine relationship with the individual, from the clear, unambiguous evidence.

I am referring to the personalizing/customizing of the absolute speed of light to the observer, irrespective of whether he is stationary or moving at a constant speed. In our space-time reference-frame that is a unique occurrence. Measurement of the speed of everything else is relative.

Two cars running parallel to each other, one at 30 mph the other at 50 mph; the speed of the 50 mph car, as measured by an observer in the other car would be 20 mph, since his car is already travelling at 30 mph in the same direction.

The same two cars at night-time have the beams of another car's head-lights behind them shining on the respective rears of their car. The speed of the light-beams shone on them by the car behind them will always be found by the observer in each one of them, to be that same absolute speed, despite the different speeds at which their own respective vehicles are travelling.

This is how it is expressed at 'howitwordsdaily.com':

"Einstein’s Theory of Special Relativity, first postulated in 1905, says that the laws of physics and the speed of light are the same for all observers, regardless of their own speed or motion. To have a better understanding, imagine two people travelling at different speeds observing the same beam of light. According to Special Relativity, both will record the same speed for the beam, regardless of their own speed and direction.
This contradicts more practical examples on Earth. If a car moves at 40mph away from an observer, and another travels at 50mph from the same point in the same direction, relative to each other the second car will be moving at 10mph. However, a light beam moving in the same direction as the cars would appear to have no change in speed relative to them and would remain at its universally agreed value c, about 299,792,458 metres per second. Of course, this is theoretical and in practice not measurable, but nevertheless it’s the basis of Einstein’s Theory of Special Relativity."

It amounts to scientific proof of the existence of a personal God - theism, and not just the impersonal 'deism'. It is counter-rational at the mechanistic level, but so is quantum physics.

There is a 'cosy', secular convention that the paradoxes of physics, increasingly proliferating, the deeper it is probed, are counter-intuitive. They are not. They are counter-rational. But that would destroy the mystique they like to propagate and preserve at all costs around science, as a special, uniquely sound and sure form of knowledge, when the reality is that the paradoxes of physics are every bit as unfathomably, indeed, imponderably mysterious (or 'absurd', as the fathers of quantum physics, Max Planck and Niels Bohr, preferred to call it), as are the mysteries taught by the Christian church concerning the nature of the Most Holy Trinity and Christ's incarnation, for example.

Today's secular scientists follow "the letter" of the precepts of the great paradigm-changers, but can't actually bring themselves to embrace the actual truths, themselves; hence the use of the term, "counter-intuitive", claiming a passion for intuitive thinking, while clinging for dear life onto the certainties of mechanistic, Newtonian physics, petrified of the intellectually humbling pardadigm of quantum physics, with its authors' unashamed invocation of absurdity, absolutely repugnant to reason, and hence, intrinsically unfathomable.

The first thing the 'naive realists', as Einstein called them, will say, is: "Where did the Church get the evidence?" Well, Einstein did not arrive at his relativity theories by the scientific method. He used his singularly un-hidebound imagination; as he often stated he considered imagination to be more important than knowledge. He once pointed to the drawer in his desk at the patent office, and remarked to a colleague that that was his Department of Theoretical Physics.
 
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drich0150

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I have identified your repeated efforts in the construction of several straw man fallacies contained in your arguments to point out the desperation you have employed in your efforts. (So sorry to steal your thunder Mr pants, but I was here long before you.) Nice to see that even if on a subconscious level, you are indeed reading my posts and processing them.

I will when you actually present an answer that addresses the question, instead of dodging it.
How many time in one discussion do you require one to answer a question?

You were caught in a lie and do not even have the integrity to admit it. This is sad.

Please tell me how is one supposed to "educate one's self" if the subject in question has been created on the spot by an individual who is using the "term" in question to prop up a weak argument?

Admit your lie so we can move on.

Can you name me one historically reliable, non-canonical gospel that was rejected by the church for being secular?
Why not do you own research?
While I could direct you to wards some resources, I don't have enough privileges to post links yet, so I'm afraid you'll have to go through the arduous, back-breaking, time-consuming process of entering two words(or more) into a search engine and finding the links yourself.
 
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Please tell me how is one supposed to "educate one's self" if the subject in question has been created on the spot by an individual who is using the "term" in question to prop up a weak argument?
Wait. Wait wait wait. So your argument is now that the historical method is a fictional field of study concocted by my imagination?

Are you serious?

I wish I could believe you're not, but the astounding level of ignorance you've displayed thus far - not only about science, history, and other religions, but also about Christianity itself - indicates otherwise. It seems like you've now been reduced to incoherent babbling in a desperately futile attempt to shore up your ignorance-based arguments, and your only purpose here is to now lower the average IQ of people who're posting in this thread.

Why not do you own research?
Actually, I have. The answer is that there is no such thing as a historically-reliable, secular lost gospel. I didn't ask the question to find out the answer, because I already know it, but to find out how an ignorant boor like yourself is going to answer it. Apparently your best attempt was to lie and pretend that you don't have enough privileges to post links. That's a sin by the way, better deal with it first before being a Pharisee-like hypocrite and accusing others of lying to cover up your own ignorance.

You're nothing short of an embarrassment to yourself and the religion that you're supposedly defending but are actually making an utter mockery of. As I've mentioned earlier, I'm interested in talking to people who can genuinely answer the question. I'm afraid to inform you that you've failed by a wide margin to meet even that simplest of requirements, and will be henceforth ignored until you can provide useful discussion that isn't based on nonsense and ignorance.
 
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Brenda Morgan

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All RAZZLE DAZZLE to show us how smart you are. But totally irrelevant.
 
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No need to apologize, that's the whole point of having a discussion.

maizer, I'd like to know your opinions about other stories in the Bible where the characters do believe in and love God after he shows himself; Abraham, Moses, King David, the various Israelite judges, etc. It would seem there are enough stories that favor the opposing conclusion as well. What do you think?
 
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paul, I'd be greatly interested to see a brief description of this testing, your physics equations on how to extend the constancy of light speed to prove the existence of God, who were the ones to have peer-reviewed these equations, and how did they do it. Thanks in advance.
 
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Brenda Morgan

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I noticed that at least one person got all involved in scientific mumbo-jumbo to answer your very good question. I know that one of the important things about science is that when someone makes a scientific claim other scientists work to verify the claim. If it can't be verified it is ignored as junk science.
I have been a Christian for my entire life. I was brought up Christian with many generations of Christians. I have studied the Bible since I was old enough to read. As I have matured one thing has bothered me. What verification is there for the claims of Christianity? If only God would have put something in the Bible that we could look at now and know for sure that this fact verifies that the Bible is truly the word of God.
 
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