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1. God would be accountable if he made you and I robots. This is not the case. Humanity has the ability to make free moral choices.
If I made a bunch of robots that I claimed had true free will yet they all went around killing women, do you really think the issue is that they have free will, or that I screwed up some programming and how they were wired?
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2. If a person takes their kids to bourbon street, and let them wander on their own, and they get into bad stuff, did the kids make their their own free choices? Please note that this hypothetical scenario situation is the exact opposite of what happened in the Garden. God put mankind in a perfect environment, gave man instructions,had a relationship with man. Man still made a free choice to do what God had instructed him not too.
Ya, well were you born in the Garden of Eden? The bible says that a man should not be held liable for his fathers wrongdoing. We are born into a world where, according to the Bible, whether we believe in the Bible or not, Satan has power to temp us and deceive us. That is no different than allowing your child to wander around Bourbon and have bad people try to trick them and get them to do bad things.
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3. God allowed Adam and Eve to be tempted in the best possible scenario. God allowed Jesus to be tempted in the worst possible scenario. God allowing people to be tempted, has a purposes throughout the scripture. Temptations often expose the true allegiance of one's heart. The lesson we learn from temptation is that we need to lean into God during these moments vs sin. The results will be rewarded. It's okay for God to allow testing and trials for our good because He has proven and promised He can more than reward any loss suffered.
Yet, if the temptation is too much, and if you do not find what you have been told of the Bible to be true, you are screwed into eternal damnation.
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I think this is a really great question. If you are like me you wouldn't take a leap of blind faith. You would evaluate the options, their claims, and then try come up for tests for the validity of each claim. At some point after weighing the options you have the freedom to invest of one of the options or none of the options. You are however are not free from the consequences of choosing incorrectly. If you choose to not make a choose, you lose out on the potential benefits.
And not only lose out on the benefits, but also suffer for all eternity, without hope of ever being saved from it.
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Many children doubt their parents existence, especially when the parent dies young, but good parents who are alive are available. Kids will question their goodness at times. God is always available as well.
That is a large cop out. Every child completely believes in the existence of the adults that care for them. Even when I was a full believing Christian I can tell you, I may have felt God was always there, but there were so many times where desperate questions to him were never answered. If a child goes to their adult caretaker with a desperate issue, the adult will engage them and actually work with the child in a real way. As a christian looking to god, I just had to "put it in god's hands" and have faith it would be ok.
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in the over 23,000 verses of scripture God is consistent about punishing evil, being patient with sinners, and being willing to forgive any and all sins. No one who is innocent is going to hell and no one who is guilty will go unpunished. The innocent may suffer on Earth like Jesus did but He makes up for it in eternity.
The problem is, no one is innocent. Yet millions of people find different beliefs than Christianity to be more convincing for them to live a moral and good life. Millions in other parts of the world who have heard the "good news" yet found it to be lacking. And because of their intellectual error, if they die without being converted to Christian, they are doomed to eternal misery.
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Or that is the cost of freedom.
This is another false narrative. Free will does not require a never ending torture or misery chamber for your soul to exist in if you choose wrong. I cannot tell a woman that she can only have free will to choose to love me if the consequence of her not loving me is being tortured in my basement.
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The fatal flaw is still valuing 'faith' over the "object of faith" Let me try this way. Faith doesn't save Christians. If Jesus didn't die and rise from the dead then I'm not going to heaven, because there is no such thing, no matter how convincing I find the arguments to be, no matter how hard I believe or obey the written text. I'm doomed. If Buddhism is true, I unenlightened, If Islam is true, I'm doomed to hell, if Hinduism is true, I'm doomed to be in a repeated cycle of the lowest end of the reincarnation cycle, if atheism is true, then I have wasted the one and only life I have for trying to live for Jesus and deny my fleshly desires. The consequences of reality apply regardless of the intensity of ones faith.
So you are saying, "you better choose correctly because it could be very bad if you don't". I refuse to accept that that is a choice that a god of love would give to such ignorant creatures as us humans. We know so little, yet our eternal soul is on the line.
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They will if you tell them. God wants you and I to participate in this work. There will be people from every language group and tribe on the face of the earth that will believe.
Yet right now the vast majority of them in non western nations are not believers. And all of them that die, having heard the "good news" and still not accepting it over their beliefs (which is millions of them over the years) are doomed to eternal misery or torture. If it is true that those that never hear the "good news" are not judged, then it is almost an act of terror to go over there to preach the "good news" because you are subjecting them to judgment. Far more will go to hell because of you "spreading the word" than had you never went.
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Salvation has nothing to do with being smart. Consider the history of God's interaction with people. From Adam and Eve who saw God, what happened to mess things up? Man did what's right in his own eyes, man chose not to follow God or teach their kids to follow God. The kids lose sight and knowledge of God. In the OT, God was continually pursuing these wicked people (Nineveh) and saving them. God is still doing this. God will save people through the preaching of the gospel. You can preach the gospel, why aren't you? If Christianity is true, God can save people through your participation with Him.
God sounds so patient and loving when you put it that way. Because you leave out the fact (per the Bible) that the instant you die, he stops pursuing you and if you did not become a believer, suddenly you are an object of hate to him. Because to subject a soul to eternal misery for choosing wrong, can be nothing but an act of hate.
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Prove to me with irrefutable facts that whatever it is that you are living for is the correct worldview.
My worldview is that probably everyone is wrong. Yours is that everyone but the few that believe exactly as you do, are wrong, and you are right.
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I'm not saying this to dismiss your question as I will give you my answers but I want you to take the time to really consider the amount of evidence that you have for what you are living for. All too often people want a burden of proof for God that they do not accept in their own lives for what they are living for.
There is just as much evidence of fact for Islam, or Buddhism or many other faiths. You choose your belief most likely because of where you were born on this earth and what you were exposed to. You give yourself far too much credit in this choice. If you were born in the middle of China or India or Saudi Arabia with the same exact brain you were born with here, you would very likely never consider the Bible to be truth even after hearing what it says. And you would be condemned to eternal misery because of the bad luck of your geography.
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While I cannot prove God to you. Here is the evidence that convinces me.
1. Order (math), design (humanity), information (DNA) and creatures capable of thinking rationally in the universe. rational does not come from the non rational and random unguided reactions do not produce order and information
This also is pretty convincing for me that there is a designer of some sort. However, looking at the nature of quantum mechanics and how much it is a very real possibility that the universe exists in such a way that every possible possibility does happen through random motion of particles and we are in just one of an almost infinite versions of reality, I don't see any logical reasoning that would support some sort of eternal punishment or reward at the end of our lives, especially since it is very likely that the almost infinite other versions of us actually chose every possible choice we could have ever made throughout our lives.
I am convinced though that reality does seem to be biased toward conscious thought.
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2. The Genesis 'animals reproducing after their kind" is what I observe in nature which contradicts a popular philosophy of science.
Science shows that the dna of species has to be close enough to each other in order to reproduce. I don't see how this is contradictory. But within that variation of allowance, we can see vast differences of outcomes, which easily supports evolution.
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3. The Genesis account lists the consequences of mans sins. I see these in nature.
Not proof that the writer was inspired by God. All it takes is the act of observation.
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4. The Bible has a moral code. This moral code agrees with my conscious. I feel guilt when I'm selfish or use unkind words to someone and commit other sins that are much worse. Buddhism doesn't see sin as a problem. Buddhism also has a moral law or right way of doing things without a moral law giver.
Your conscience is highly dependent on your upbringing and culture. You grew up in a judeo/Christian culture. Of course your conscience will match most of it's assertions.
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5. The Bible is written in Historical narrative and not Myth or legend. It's the correct genre for historical fact.
6. Events match up with history. Wars, archaeology, coins, people, places.
7. Jerusalem, the dead sea, Jericho, Bethlehem, the Jordan river, Egypt, the sea of Galilee are real places, not mythical locations.
I can easily write a historically and geographically accurate book and throw in supernatural made up assertions. So what?
However, it is obvious that there are historical and geological errors in the Bible if you really study it. Mark gets all kinds of things wrong about the Palestine area. Herod's slaughter of the innocents in Mathew 2 was never recorded anywhere else, even by writers of that time that wrote about Herod's bad actions. There are many examples like this.
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8. There's more manuscript evidence in spades for the Bible than any other work of antiquity.
There is also evidence in spades that the MMLJ Gospels were not written or even orally passed down from the apostles the books were named for.
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9. Jesus claimed to be God, His audience understood His claims. Given His teaching, He didn't display mental illness.
According to a few stories written by people that we have no idea who they were. It could be argued that many books of the NT never assume Jesus is God.
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10. Jesus displayed the power of God, walking on water, turning water into wine, exercising authority over demons, the sea, and the wind.
11. Jesus was good and showed this, by raising the dead, giving sight to the blind, healing the sick, and intentionally dying for the sins of all humanity.
None of this is provable.
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12. The OT Hebrew documents written hundreds of years before describe in detail the person of Jesus and the events of the crucifixion in minute detail by multiple authors who never knew each other. Each contributes unique pieces to the picture.
So you are saying that literature written hundreds of years after other known literature that described a person of the future, had similarities to the old literature? This is stunning why?
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13. Jesus is mentioned in historical documentation outside of scripture that matches the time period. (Islam claims that Jesus didn't die. This claim doesn't match the time period nor the historical claims)
So were many other men who weren't God.
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14. Jesus miracles and ministry and life was all in public.
15. We have surviving eye witness testimony contained in the gospels. The eyewitness did not die for their faith or belief, they died for what they claimed to have seen. They were under intense persecution for sticking to their story and had every earthly motivation to recant.
Speculation based on unprovable literature by unknown authors.
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16. The conversion of Paul, one who so religiously opposed to Jesus that he would participate in the killing of His followers
So he liked the ideas of Christianity and wanted to help shape them. What does that prove?
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17. The existence of the Jews and their current practices/beliefs.
Proves nothing about the accuracy of the Bible so far as a supernatural God goes.
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18. Seeing lives change for the better in those who not only believe in Jesus but also follow Him.
This was one of my most convincing beliefs when I was a believer. I have witnessed countless positive changes from people I saw saved and even helped become saved. The proof was in the pudding. How could the Bible be bologna when I saw constant life changing stories taking place in my church and around me.
What helped me get around this was delving into philosophy and anthropology studies and really understanding Utilitarianism. Also following Jordan Peterson for the past year has really helped.
In the Utilitarianism view, if a group of cavemen have an incorrect superstition that says that evil spirits are expelled from their bodies in their waste and because of that belief they avoid being around or coming into contact with anything that their waste touches, including bodies of water. Then their superstition really is truth because it works. They can easily see that their survival rate is much better when they avoid their waste than when they do not.
So with this understanding, one can see that even though the Bible may contain a lot of "truth" so far as how we should live our lives, it doesn't mean that it has the ultimate reality of why it is correct. All that matters is that it works.
With my mind however, I cannot accept a Utilitarian view. I strive to know the Realist truth of what in fact is actually true in a Realist sense. And from every angle that I look at it, it seems quite clear to me that the Bible was made up and constructed over thousands of years with some of the most effective archetype stories for human living. This would make sense with the fact that so many other religions, including much other religions than Christianity that contain very similar stories.
So the fact that I have witnessed so many lives transformed through Christianity, to me, is no real proof that it is actually true metaphysically. That combined with the fact that I have no real experience with other widely followed religions and how they affect new believers. From just what I have read and heard, I see a lot of stories that are pretty similar to what I have experienced with Christianity.
People turning away from addiction and lives of self destruction. People being more loving of everyone around them. People filled with new conviction in living a good life and serving others.
Why does the Christian experience with this trump all the other religions that experience this as well?
That is not to say that I don't think there is any difference, or superiority of Christianity compared with other religions. Obviously I am biased having only been a Christian and no other religions, but I do think there is a better world view within it than most religions. Yet still, I don't see that as any reason to say that makes it metaphysically true.
I also believe that the culture that is captured at Texas A&M is far superior to that of other universities and that A&M got it right on how to build a college community. But that doesn't mean I think that the way they did it is exactly the ONLY valid way for all universities to do it.
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19. The conviction that I experience when reading the Bible, my own sin is identified and exposed.
20. Seeing how marriages thrive when a couple loves Jesus first and sacrificially love each other according to His commands in scripture. Seeing what the bible calls sin, destroy marriages.
Just goes to show how well constructed and how true to human nature the writers got it. Still not proof that it is divine in nature.
Whether you treat your neighbor with love and kindness because you think a powerful man in the sky commanded you to, or whether you do it because you just think that's what you should do doesn't matter so long as it accomplishes the same behavior.
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21. Psalm 22
22. Isaiah 53
Several valid arguments against the idea that Jesus was foretold in the OT. First and foremost that being that the writers would have been aware of the OT verses when writing about Jesus. Jewish scholars certainly do not think Isaiah 53 refers to Jesus. I think most believe it is referencing Israel itself. Which kind of makes sense, especially when most Christians do not believe Jesus had any children.
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23. Israel/Jerusalem is the focal point of the world.
Judeo/Christian culture dominated the world. The other big world religion is Islam which also has sacred sites and history there.
Of course it remains a focal point.
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24. It's the year 2018, what happened 2018 years ago?
That's when Christian scholars decided was the birth year of Jesus, and our calendar was decided upon by a Christian empire. What's so curious about that?
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25. Joel prophesied a blood moon 9th century bc, a blood moon occurred on the day of the crucifixion. The date of the eclipse can been seen on software that matches the exact day.
From a Christian Source
https://answersingenesis.org/jesus-christ/crucifixion/did-the-moon-appear-as-blood-on-the-night-of-the-crucifixion/
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26 Seeing the negative consequences of sin and guilt in my life an in the lives of others.
Just means that the writers of the Bible got a lot right about what types of things we shouldn't do in our lives because they are bad for us. Of course a vast majority of rules in the OT are outdated and really silly.
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27. A global flood is the best explanation of how dinosaurs and other animals were buried alive in sedimentary rock layers on a round planet.
https://ncse.com/cej/1/1/fatal-flaws-flood-geology
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28. Reading how Satan downplayed God's goodness in the garden, and how he downplayed the consequences, legitimacy and seeing those same patterns of attack today.
So you think a loving god allows a supernatural creature like that to prey on and trick god's creation and fool them into going to hell? Again, that's letting your young kids go unsupervised down Bourbon St at 2am.
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29. The Garden account details the lust of the flesh, eyes, and boastful pride of life. These were also the temptations of Jesus. These are realized in my life and others to this day.
So an author understands human desire and thinking? How is that proof of it being inspired by god?
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I'm glad that we can agree that people are flawed as well as nature. I think that the Bible better than any other options gives the answer to why. Sin, and nature being cursed because of sin.
Lust, pride, greed, sloth, gluttony, wrath, and envy all are perfectly explainable by evolutionary reasons.
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Why would you conclude that God would judge his creation because they did not follow a book? People often believe in God without knowing there is such a thing a bible or having ever read it. Thousands upon thousands of people believed in the 1st century before the NT was written and dispersed.
So, in your view, you do not need to believe in Jesus or accept him as your savior in order to be saved?
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God will judge people for their actions and according to the amount of revelation that they have received, and how they respond to the information.
So, you would be doing people who have never heard of Jesus a favor by never telling them about him. Why gamble with their soul? If they haven't heard it, they can't be judged by it right?
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Biblical truth number 2 is that even when people are presented with miracles directly in front of their faces, they would still choose to kill Jesus.
So we get a raw deal of never being presented with any tangible proof of Jesus or god because of what people did in the past? How is that fair to us?
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Biblical truth number 3, God love sinners, and is patient, not wanting anyone to perish. Biblical truth number
Yet, that very same omniscient and omnipotent god set up a universe in which sinners (which we all are) who do not believe in Jesus, but were told about him, will eternally suffer. That is not loving. That is not patient. If god set up that scenario, then god had to have wanted the majority of his creation to suffer eternally.
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4: It's not in God's character or nature to condemn the innocent and let the guilty walk. No one is getting an unfair or raw deal.
So, according to you, good people that are muslim, hindu or any other religion that isn't christianity will also go to heaven? Or are you taking the stand that we all are guilty and deserving of eternal torture, but only those that accept god's grace by accepting Jesus get to be saved from it?
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according to my gospel, God will judge the secrets of men through Christ Jesus......
This is also conveniently a very good way to control society and encouraging them to be good actors when no one is looking. It plays on our emotions. We want people who wrong us to suffer, and people who are innocent to be rewarded. Throw out a story that says there's a god that does just that and you will have a popular cult.
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The Bible doesn't answer all of the questions that we have about eternity and what God's judgments will look like. It does give us ton's of information about the character of God, the Holiness of God, his patience towards sinners, and His redeeming heart that He would rather punish Himself than us. As long as you have it in your mind that someone is going to get ripped off, or that the innocent will be punished, then the view that you have of God is not consistent with how he's revealed himself in scripture.
My view of the biblical god is derived exactly by logical conclusion of what the scriptures say. I gave up the whole charade of always erroring on the side of "well I just don't understand what the bible is saying in some parts because God is always good, so I just need to stay in faith and not question so much". That lasted long enough for me.
C.S. Lewis prolonged my ability to stay in that mindset but eventually logic just won over. I can no longer ignore what is on the pages.
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