If Christ died on the cross for all of humanity

The SHORTFALL between CERTAINTY / EMPRICAL EVIDENCE and belief is called faith.

You have NO emprical evidence that you will wake up the following day, yet you believe you will. The shortfall is called faith.

Let me ask you this, for something to be real, does it have to be able to be proven? If there is no proof, does that mean it is not real or never happened?

In the search for one certainty in this world, if I doubt everything, that which stands to be true is true. 

To the one who believes, no explanation is necessary.  To the one who does not believe, no explanation is possible. 

Rene Descartes, French philosopher:  I think, therefore I am. 

Soren Kerkegaard, the father of existentialism, maintained that the individual is solely responsible for giving his or her own life meaning, and for living that life well in spite of many existential obstacles and distractions including despair, angst, and boredom.

Try reading the old testament book of Ecclesiastes.  He emphatically proclaims all the actions of man to be inherently "vain", "futile", "empty", "meaningless", "temporary", "transitory", "fleeting, or "mere breath", as the lives of both wise and foolish men end in death. While Qoheleth clearly endorses wisdom as a means for a well-lived earthly life, he is unable to ascribe eternal meaning to it. In light of this perceived senselessness, he suggests that we should enjoy the simple pleasures of daily life, such as eating, drinking, and taking enjoyment in one's career or work, which are gifts from the hand of God.

I could go on and on quoting famous thinkers of the ages, but they all point toward their intellect and themselves being their own god.  The absence of a god, a creator suggests that you believe you are your own god and you are god. 

I suggest this...  that one day your brain, a loved one, even you will fail YOU so miserably that you will feel despair so great you will cry out for truth beyond your means. You will hope their is a God so greatly you will have faith, and then He will make Himself known to you.  There are natural laws in this world, natural evidence, physical proof.  And then, there are spiritual laws of the spirit world. Faith is the link between them, the bridge.  And this is as it should be.  So when you are ready to believe, if ever, that you are spirit, and will belong to the spirit world when your natural life is over,  then you will be enlightened.   And you will then want to, logically, spend eternity in the best place, with God, in heaven.  Or you won't make that decision now, and be somewhere else, separated from Him forever, and have to bear that.  You might think you could say then, wait a minute, I never had a chance to know, to decide...  But unfortunately, you just read this, and this is your chance, so don't say you were never not informed.  By making a conscious, informed decision to deny God, to be your own god, and since God knows all things, and although He wants to Love you, you have made your God given choice of free will.  Only you have to live with it. As for me, I choose heaven with Him, being loved by that amazing, undescribeable love forever.  If that means I have to stop having the delusion of being my own god, regardless of my education, wealth, or ego, then what a burden lifted, what a joy to know Him. 

Very well said.

 

Rostos,

I will stand toe to toe with someone who wants to have a battle of wits about faith versus self, and I have the education and the intellect to do so, but that is a waste of time.  I choose to live my faith. 

Matthew 11:25  At that time Jesus said, “I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children.

He also said, unless you become like little children, you never enter the Kingdom of God. 

The more complicated someone tries to make the truth sound, they only confirm that they only wish to glory themselves.  The truth is simple, and although Jesus could have had the entire world as his domain, he chose to obey God, and this simple truth: love God with all your heart and all your soul and all your being, and love your neighbor as yourself.  That is faith! 

Boberts-no one can be 100% certain of god's existence. Even Rostos and SJD would agree with that.

How many things can we be 100% sure about?

Can you be 100% sure you will be breathing this time tomorrow?

 

[Quote: Originally Posted by KittyKatz286]

the possibility of proof. "I believe there is a god." No one can possibly know this for certain until they die (and then what good is that). Faith is not testable, logic and reason are. None of us will EVER know with 100% certainty whether god exists.

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You still don't get it do you Kittykat? We are not trying to prove God exists...how could we?, at least I know I'm not. We know that as long as we're living we can't prove He exists with 100% certainty, anymore than you can prove He doesn't exist with 100% certainty.

However we have our faith, our religion that tells us He does exist and we Christians have acknowledged that we have sinned in the past and have asked Jesus Christ for forgiveness and now most of us are living a sinless life.We are preparing ourselves for that inevitable day of our deaths. In a sense it's like we have taken out a life insurance policy, a policy called faith in God by believing in God and obeying all His laws.

You said, "No one can possibly know this for certain until they die (and then what good is that)." Well, I will tell what good is that for us Christians if after our deaths we see that He does exist.

We Christians who are obeying all of God's laws and who have believed Jesus Christ is the Son of God our Lord Savior, will be giving the greatest gift anyone can ever receive, the gift of eternal life in God's Kingdom of Heaven. Imagine eternal life in paradise with God and everyone else who are saved...amen!

Now on the otherhand what do you suppose will happen to people who all their lives rejected and mocked God and lived a sinful life? It won't be pleasant for any of you when you die and see that He does exist. None of you will have that life insurance policy called faith in God. Read the Holy Bible it tells you vividly what happens to the non-believers.

Our existence here on earth is very very short like a blink of an eye as compared to an existence of eternity. Anybody who doesn't have that life insurance policy called faith in God is really taking a huge risk, a huge gamble, which is not wise at all. You are not protecting and preparing yourselves for what may come after that inevitable day that all of us are going to face one day.

Correction: will be given the greatest gift anyone can ever receive,

Rostos, hats off to you brother, you have some real staying power.

Cheers mate

I mean, this example sums up everything.

We know the universe began to exist, at this point in time, space, time and matter began to exist. Everything in this universe that begins to exist has a cause, logically, this cause must be spaceless, timeless and OUTSIDE our universe.

This cause does not conclusively prove that it is the Christian God, but it is a very very strong sign post.

Instead the atheist believes that things pop into existence uncaused or one day somehow scientists will prove that the universe always existed, or another theory that in fact there are multiverses is true. When pushed, they will say, "i dont know, but it wasnt God"?????

You see what they put there faith in?

Again, this is ONLY one sign post.

Another example, is that the rate of expansion from the big bang was so unique that if the rate was infotesimally smaller or larger by the smallest of margins, the universe would collapse. Doesnt this point to an intelligent mind sending out unique conditions? The non believer just thinks we are lucky.

Another is that living cannot come from living. It has never been proven after 100's of years of lab testing. YET, non believers think that life came from a pond where lightining struck a pond, etc etc, even then the odds are ridicolous. Again, they prefer to believe that we were just lucky.

Then this single cell organism just replicated, split and we originated from the ocean, even more luck.

so to sum it up, they prefer to believe,

The universe popped out of nothing - Just lucky

The rate of expansion just suited us - Just lucky

The distances between the earth, moon and sun are so precise that any slight variation, there would be no life  - Just lucky

Then lightining struck a pond for life to develop - just lucky

Then a single cell organism developed into a human - Just lucky

I mean seriously?

You can know for certain...  believe that Jesus was the messiah sent by God to make a Way for us to know Him, personally... he lived, died, defeated Satan on earth and in the spirit, rose again to heaven, and sent the Holy Spirit to be with those who believe.  When we believe he takes our burdens, our fears, our sin and replaces them with forgiveness, love, etc.  If and when you chose to beleive this, and place your complete faith and trust in Him, and not yourself, you will receive the Holy Spirit.  Then there is no doubt, and the scriptures will become evident and clear, and the logic of it all makes sense. Until then it may appear, as many of you have said it here, "nonsense".  However, you will be born again, as they say.  You can't win the argument, talk is cheap, you can't learn it, earn it, or find it any other way than to receive it as a gift.  That decision must be made by faith, not by logic or discourse of any kind.  That is the spiritual law, and it is as firm or as solid as any natural law, even more so.  The new testament books are a great resource.  Anyone who is truly interested in finding the truth will read it as they would any other text searching for the truth.  Give it a chance.  It is a powerful thing.  The truth isn't really all that hard to find.  It is what we do when we find it that defines us. 

Rostos - I guess we're really, really LUCKY!

Its more than luck.

At least with luck, no matter how lucky it is, always has a cause.

For non believers, the origins of the universe didnt even have a cause.

Maybe he was into S&M

SJD - I agree, we cannot know for 100%. I am no trying to say we can, neither are you, I'm calling out the MORONS and RETARDS like Killer_b who have a brain so undeveloped that they can't comprehend the concept or probability and chance and yesterday who actually thinks we can be certain when you and Rostos acknowledge we cannot. Just because someone is too stupid to understand how likely it is that a planet would develop perfectly for life the way ours did over the course of 15 billion years, doesn't mean it's not possible. Now SJD, is your theory possible-of course, I happen to not believe it. But to say "the odds are so ridiculous" is asinine and ignorant because simple math proves that the odds of everything occurring perfectly for life is almost 100%.

Good luck believing in "chance" KK. Thanks for the insults, they were quite necessary.

However as unlikely as it is if i shot the basketball 50 times in a row from one side of the court to the other and got it in, there is a cause - me throwing the basketall. Non believers would be open to the possibility that the balls somehow made there way into the basket - UNCAUSED.

Just because we don't know the answer doesn't mean there isn't one. Hawking said something CAN in fact come from nothing, in theory, so it's a potential answer; not saying it's right, but it refutes the argument that something can't be uncaused.

where do dinosaurs fit into all of this...??  if god created all of earth and everything that inhabits it, did he create and eventually destroy them? - then proceed to create humans and all other animals we know now?

2 things

1. You are OPEN to the idea that something can pop into existence from nothing? because hawking said? You are appealing to the fallacy of authority here. NOTHING can pop into existence from nothing, NOT even virtual particles. Hawking is playing a simple "accounting" trick here. he is effectively saying, if i travel from A to point B and then return the same way i came back to my original point - i never went anywhere cause it balances each other out. He should stick to science.

2. You say you dont know, but it wasnt God. A bit of contradiction there huh? To be consistent, you should say, "It could be God"