Why should I believe?

[Tnmusicman]

Maybe I am confusing definitions because I'm still not sure what you mean. We know that we do things that are wrong, but I'm just not seeing the leap as to how you get to "therefore we know we are sinners and need god".

The easiest answer I can give you is that the only way to pardon our sins is through God. Obviously,one has to presuppose that God exists and since I've never been an atheist I really couldn't give you a more complete answer,as I would be ignorant of such.
However,if we are to assume God exists then its a different story. Basically,in order to be with God we must be sinless. Since there are none sinless except God we must accept the gift of salvation provided by God. The blood of Christ is the only way to achieve this. You can't "good works" your way into heaven.

The way that I made the leap as you say is because God convicted me of my sins. That coupled with the fact that only the blood of Christ can wash away my sins and that I desired to draw closer to God.

I suppose if one doesn't believe in God that may never happen or if it does happen it might be written off without giving any thought to God and never thought of (unless it happens again).

Once again,not to be a broken record,but unless one is willing to acknowledge the possibility that God exists then this may not ever come together for you ( as far as what we are discussing ). Man may think he is a good person but even the best men still need God. I know you have a great life and no horrible things happening to you but at the end of this life Christians believe the grave isn't the final stop. We will either go to heaven or to hell. If you aren't ready to believe that (or have no good reason to) then this means little to you but it is in the mind of every Christian so it's why a lot of Christians tend to focus on hell and heaven.

I wish if I wasn't getting at what you want to know yet that you could maybe explain it in a different way or maybe ask roughly the same thing but worded differently. I'm trying my best to give you complete answers but it sounds as if I haven't touched on something yet. If this is indeed the case perhaps let me know and try to expand on what you want to know. Ill do my best to answer but honestly, I don't really know how else to explain God convicting us of our sins any better than I already have.

 

[Mediaeval]

I disagree that there is a sign of intelligent design in biology. (Keeping in mind that this isn't a debate forum, I'll leave it at that unless you probe the topic further)

How is meaning through family and society arbitrary?

And of course, if you define "meaning" to be something that requires a god then of course I don't have "meaning", but that's just a word game. Why should I worry about "transcendent meaning"?

Sometimes we craft for ourselves a canon of persuasion that is more difficult than it needs to be. Could it be that you have conditioned yourself to dismiss the evidence of design? Even Richard Dawkins finds the evidence of complex design so compelling that he suggests with a straight face that life on earth may have been introduced by alien beings.

What proof will satisfy if the most accessible evidence is dismissed out of hand while effectively maintaining that, given enough time, a group of monkeys in a room full of typewriters could indeed produce the Encyclopedia Britannica? As St Augustine remarked, Reason would never submit, if it did not judge that there are some occasions on which it ought to submit.

'Arbitrary' inasmuch as the meaning you affirm or deny is as easily denied or affirmed by someone else or even by yourself at a different time. What you miss is that you and your loved ones are worth far more than what short-lived products of chance can ascribe to each other. Would you not prefer to live and be treated as the purposeful creation of a wise and loving Creator, an immortal soul, made in His image, who will see his loved ones yet again after this life?