[[If you don't want the reply to be pushed to a next page compared to the original post, please don't post in the between.]]
----------------------
Mr. Omnipotent, you have no need to apologize for posting such a lengthy post.
I'll try to reply to every point you made in the post.
> So pretty much you're paraphrasing Psalms 14:1
That, I did not realize :)
> Some fools who are vile and do no good:
Naturally I cannot attest to every single person's fate from the list you posted, but yes, so it is.
Their service for the world may be great ― but unless Yeshua is their lord, they have done nothing to avert the doom of their soul, nor the doom of anyone else for that matter. (
Mark 8:34-38
They could have done the same findings
and had their soul saved. I know personally some Christian scientists ― one of who has made a significant discovery in refining GPS technology, which he claims to have received from God.
> I assume that, as most Christians do, you are not viewing my message
> objectively, but rather as a test of your faith.
>...
> However, I would like to act as the "devil on your shoulder"
> for a bit. An apt comparison, since surely you believe that I was sent to tempt you.
Yes and no: The concept of "test of faith" has never really occurred to me.
I don't consider you having been specifically sent to tempt me. You have entirely reasonable basis on why you write. Also, it is sometimes
good to act as a "devil's advocate" in the literacy sense. We both agree on that.
> I, for one, believe you to be a cornerstone of this community, and it upsets me
> that you are leaving us to indulge what is, in my view, a game of smoke and mirrors.
> You have your own thoughts on this matter, and I obviously cannot prevent you from
> doing solely as you wish.
Your statement of trust comforts me, though other parts of that sentence sadden me.
> I will confess that I am not the originator of these questions, I grabbed these
> from a rather popular youtube video that I found intriguing.
Then chances are that I have already answered some of them in this thread or in some other thread. But I'll ignore that possibility and go an extra length for answering them again, since you also went an extra length for typing them. Despite Warp probably soon complaining at you for being unimaginative ;)
---------
> 1. As a Christian, I am sure you believe in the power of prayer, to perform miracles,
> heal the sick and so on. You probably believe that God is curing cancer and nullifying
> the effects of poison, removing kidney stones, etc.
> However, we've never seen God heal an amputee or a disfigured burn victim.
I don't think I have heard of YHWH healing a disfigured burn victim, but I do have heard of him healing an amputee.
If we generalize this to the miracle of regenerating new tissue, there are more cases. I have heard everywhere of miracles of legs of different length being healed by growing the shorter one in an instant (though I'm not sure whether I have actually witnessed one myself directly as opposed to a video recording, as I've stopped paying attention), and there are cases of other body parts being regenerated in a matter of minutes ― for example, the
small intestine being grown from 100 cm to 200 cm.
For the record, I haven't heard of cases of God neutralizing a poison either ― but I have met a woman whose allergy of potatoes (among other things) was healed.
But this is not a question about what I have seen, but what
the complainer has seen or what they have not, right?
Every miracle that YHWH performs, is a unique situation ― there are many reasons why it does happen and why it does not. God is a living person, not a miracle-o-matic, and simple (as if) explanations like the praying person lacking faith or the recipient of miracle lacking faith, or the poral opposite thereof, only covers so many cases.
Kathryn Kuhlman, a well-known preacher, who held huge conferences where miracle healings happened (for the record, I have not categorized what kind of healing miracles happened there and what kind of miracles did not), has written a few books and given a few speeches about the matter. Even she has had to change her views at some point; she used to believe that there's a clear A-B-C formula about miracles, but later, she noticed that God just does whatever He wants. Miracles can happen even when she's not praying, without her knowing about it, and so on.
---------
> 2. As a Christian, you believe that God cares about you and answers your prayers.
> And I'm sure that at some point in your life you've asked for God to help you with
> something and he's given you a path for you to take, a solution to your problem,
> so my second question is: Why are there so many starving people in our world?
Oh well, you weren't kidding about copying these questions from someone else's list.
Well, I'll go ahead and copy someone's answer for it (paraphrasing, I can't bother to go searching for it): Because there are so many unloving people in the world. People who do not have the love that is spoken about in
1 Corinthians chapter 13. People whose lord Yeshua is tend to have this love in greater percentage than the people whose lord Yeshua is not.
---------
> 3. You wrote on your blog that you believe in the Old Testament as the word of God.
> Why is it in the old Testament, that God demands the death of so many innocent people?
> Why would a loving God want us to murder our fellow human beings over such trivial matters?
Rhetorical question: What is "innocent"?
> Exodus 35:2 - God demands that we kill everyone who works on the Sabbath day.
> Deuteronomy 21:18-21 - God demands that we kill disobedient teenagers.
> Leviticus 20:13 - God demands the death of homosexuals.
> Deuteronomy 22:13-21 - God demands that we kill girls who are not virgins when they marry.
I am not bothering to explain
why exactly homosexuality is bad.
God made some
very strict commandments.
For example, when the Ark of Covenant was created, he declared laws on who, of the Israeli people, are allowed to work in its vicinity ― or even, who are allowed to see it. If someone, who is not allowed to see it, saw it, even if for a blink of eye, they would die. God himself would kill them. Obviously, the Ark was placed in the most sacred part of the Tabernacle, later the Temple, sealed with heavy curtains and such, to prevent such mishaps happening.
Now, fastforward a couple of hundred years, and it happened that the Philistines stole the Ark. They carried it to their own land.
Unfortunately for them, weird incidents began happening. They put the Ark in a temple of their gods, but the statues of their gods were found bowing down to the Ark, or dismembered. Everywhere they put the Ark, it brought nothing but misfortune to them. So they decided to send the Ark back to the Israelites.
The Israelites received the Ark and great joy abound ― except for the fact, that God killed 50'000 men who had looked at the Ark. (
1. Samuel 5:1-6:21)
YHWH stressed the holiness of his commandments over anything else. He showed that whatever he declares, it
is the law. He is also merciful though. Whenever he said that "if you don't repent, bad things will happen to you", he gave lots and lots of time. Before drowning the lands in the great flood, he gave centuries after centuries of time for the people to turn back from their evil ways. But the action came at last.
The law was widely known. It was fair, because
everyone knew that if you do A, B will happen. Now, if you do A, and then B happens, who is to blame? None other than the person who committed the offense.
If fairness is not the problem, what is the problem? The fact that death penalties were involved? Or the fact that they were involved for
small matters?
In front of God, there is no small matter or a big matter. Christians emphasize this by explaining that anyone can repent and receive salvation -- whether their sins are as small as stealing a pen from their brother, or whether they've murdered a hundred people. But it works for penalties just as well as it does for mercy.
If you have a single sin on your conscience, no matter what kind of sin, and you don't have Yeshua as your Lord to defend you by offering his sinless life as a testimony in front of God's judgement ― he will say "I never knew you" ―, you will have an eternal death penalty.
> I'm sure you've never personally stoned anyone for working on a Sunday
> (or a Saturday depending on your denomination.) Are you failing to uphold God's law?
> Of course you aren't. That's because what God is demanding of you is not acceptable in today's society.
I have pondered this issue too. Acceptable in today's society is indeed one factor.
Christians also hold the view that it is not up to us to exact judgements for offending God's law anymore; God will do that himself. But I admit this is a shoddy issue; I must study it more.
(Or I could look up someone else's answer for this, but I'm not going that route here.)
---------
> 4. Now let's talk about science. You and I and everyone that we both know has
> had the privilege of growing up in a society that has a strong backing in science.
> Most things we see on a daily basis was designed by an engineer. If you think
> of God as the One who made the world, then it is easy enough to think of Him
> as an engineer of sorts, but on a much grander scale. In fact, it would be
> tempting to think of Him both the original engineer and the greatest engineer.
> If we see God as a wonderful engineer and scientist, then:
> Why is there so much anti-scientific nonsense in the Bible?
> Science is important to our economy and our way of life. If it weren't for the remarkable
> advances of science in the last 350 or so years I wouldn't be able to talk to you at all.
Nitpicking: Science has only become important to our economy lately.
Anyway, the core issue here is relevance. YHWH has a consistent message that goes throughout it. It governs the nature of God, and our relationship to him.
He did not give us a science and engineering book ― he gave us the brain instead for that purpose.
Also, I get the impression that God does not really expend much conscious effort in designing the physical world. He just
wishes something to exist or to happen, and lo, the universe complies and shapes itself; it's a natural law. That's how miracles are enacted as well. Well, this might have just been nonsense, but my point is, it is a mistake to think that we could chit-chat with God on an engineer-to-engineer level. He is beyond us by an unimaginable number of magnitudes.
He has to dumb-down things to us by that unimaginable number of magnitudes, and if
you're an engineer, you know how much is left of the original message after that.
But the implication of your writing was not that things have been dumbed down for us. You are really claiming that these events listed in the Bible
did not happen. The word "science" was just prose on top of your real question.
> The world was created in 6 days approximately 6000 years ago
> There was a flood that covered the entire world including the top of Mt. Everest.
> There was a man who lived in the stomach of a fish for three days.
> Man was created when God breathed life into a handful of dust. Woman was created when God took a rib from Man and rubbed it.
Labelling these as claims 1, 2, 3 and 4, I'll summarize my views on them:
1) As close approximation to what really happened as we need to know. Key points: There were 6 time periods of creating something, and the 7th period he rested, and it was finished approximately 6000 of our years ago.
2) There was a flood that covered most of the world. Whether it was entire world, I don't know. A big maybe. Theories on how this happened vary, including the concept of it never having rained before that.
3) What is the problem? Is it about the scientific classification of whales as not-fish?
4) Chemically, not very much separates us from the dust of the ground. I don't see why God couldn't have formed the human being from it.
---------
> 5. Why is God such a proponent of slavery? (Exodus 21:20-21, Colossians 3:22-24, Ephesians 6:5, 1 Peter 2:18)
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which prohibits slavery, is not God's word ― it's man's word.
Now, I have no idea what were the conditions under which a person became a slave in Israel following YHWH's word.
Not a lot is written about it in the Bible.
But I think, writing that God is a
proponent of slavery is kind of wrong. Rather, he is not against it. Never in the Bible is he
telling anyone to enslave anyone or telling anyone to become a slave, not being that before.
He is, however, giving laws about becoming
free from slavery ― see Exodus 21:1-6.
---------
> 6. Why do bad things happen to good people?
This is a stock question as well.
http://www.google.fi/search?q=%22bad+things+happen+to+good+people%22
There are many attempts at answering that question, so I will only write something that puts the "bad things" to the proper perspective, quite literally:
Life in this world is but a blink of an eye compared to the eternity that comes after it.
---------
> 7. Why didn't any of Jesus' miracles in the Bible leave behind any evidence?
Did they not?
(I'm feigning curiosity here for
reasons I don't want to explain further.)
---------
> 8. How do we explain the fact that Jesus has never appeared to you?
Not in a form of audiovisual perception, no.
But he has appeared to some other people ― but this goes on the side of
anecdotal evidence, so I don't explain it further. (Replace "Jesus" with any other person name and it's still a difficult question to answer without relying on anecdotal evidence.)
> if you pray for Him to appear before you nothing happens.
I haven't tried, so I can't tell whether this is true. Again, when a living person is concerned, scientific when-A-then-B statements don't work that well.
---------
> 9. Why would Jesus want you to eat his body and drink his blood?
> It seems strange doesn't it. If we were to talk of this act in any other context
> it would seem like some sort of weird satanic ritual. An act that cannibals would perform.
You probably know that he did not
literally tell anyone to eat his body or drink his blood. The bread and the wine were symbols for his body and his blood.
The Bible is rich with symbolatry ― many things to be remembered are enriched with symbolic gestures. On the Passover, one should slaughter a lamb and eat it together with the family, leaving nothing remaining, in remembrance to the events which lead to Israel's exodus from Egypt.
It was the Passover meal when the Messiah declared that from now on, anyone should do that to remember that they are saved ― exodus ― from the sin, through Yeshua's wounds. (Isaiah 53:5.)
---------
> 10. Why do Christians get divorced at a higher rate than non-Christians?
Because it is impossible in the long run for a Christian ― Non-Christian marriage to work out, because the believer cannot openly talk about what's on his/her mind, and they do not share the views on what is morally acceptable and what is not. They teach contradictory values to their children, etc.
Also, if they say, "What God has put together, let no man put asunder", and God
did not put them together, what does that mean?
Now I don't have statistics to back this up, but I believe that for christian ― christian marriages, divorce rates are considerably smaller.
But still, it holds that marriages should be decided in God's guidance. I personally know a couple who have been happily married for more than 40 years,
without a single argument ― something of a scientific impossibility. They met as a result for the man's prayers for three years for God to show him the bride He has meant for him.
And I also know an ex-couple who divorced after a marriage of 10 years or so ― they were both allegedly christian, through the man never really exercised signs of that being true. I was a child when they married, and before that, I already felt they were not meant for each others; the circumstances for their getting together were wrong.
> To explain this you have to come up with some convoluted rationalization.
Not that convoluted.
---------
> So, we have looked at ten difficult questions thus far. And, if you've been attempting to answer
> them, and square them with your faith, rather than simply discarding them as cleverly worded traps
> of some sort (which, even if they were disingenuous in some way, there is always a to answer the
> question correctly. For instance the famous question, "Do you still beat your wife?" you can't
> answer "Yes" and you can't answer "No" but you can answer "But sir, I have never beat my wife.")
> then you'll notice that you have a series of very strange rationalizations and excuses to make
> them fit with your preconceived notions of how the world works.
>
> I'm going to assume that this elaborate network of excuses feels uncomfortable to you, how
> could it not?
I'm sorry to trump your parade, but of your questions, only #11 is uncomfortable, and that's because you're trying to force my hand by ignoring everything I wrote and coming up with a predetermined conclusion.
> 11. what happens when we pose each of the questions from before, but assume that God is imaginary?
> We find that the answers to these questions, rather than being a convoluted mess of rationalizations
> and excuses, becomes perfectly clear.
>blahblah, blahblah, blahblah, blah blah blah
>
> Not just interesting, it's important. We can only think logically about our world when we
> understand that God is imaginary. It is the only conclusion that one can arrive at when he
> or she thinks logically about his or her religion and faith.
>and blah blah, blah, blah blah blah.
I'm sorry for treating your post like that (no, you did not write "blah blah blah"), but this part really went on the "foolishness" region I mentioned in my earlier post.
Yes, if you
assume that God is imaginary, you'll come to those conclusions. That much I agree with you.
But the rest of your post pretty much operates on the zealous mindset that is unfortunately very common in atheists.
---------
> Now, one last question,
> 12. Why should you care? And why do I care?
> What difference does it make if people want to believe in a god, even if he is imaginary?
>
> It matters because people who believe in imaginary beings are delusional.
> It matters because people who talk to imaginary beings are delusional.
> It matters because people who believe in imaginary superstitions like prayer are delusional.
As in #11, you provided answers for your question yourself ― should I answer it anymore?
Probably not, since you already went in your victory parade mode.
> I sincerely hope that the 3 hours I spent writing this post is not wasted.
If it's any comfort, it took me 3 hours writing this reply too.
These 6 hours hopefully brought some entertainment and thinking on this board. :)
