Evidence For God. The ?real? evidence for a living God

[truefusion 3]

but why God lets this evil continue is a Mystery.

Er, it's not a mystery. You speak of free will in the same post. What would free will be if we could only choose one thing? If we could only choose to love God, how could that possibly be even considered true love, when we are forced to? That is why there is another option: evil. For instance, i can tell my computer to tell me "I love you, [insert name here]" everytime it starts up. But, it wouldnt mean that it actually loves me. If there was no free will, we would all be preprogrammed computers.

[wild20 0]

jmb2006:Exactly! We have free will. And God cannot control us like little robots. And that is the point I try to make. Although not many people listen to me anyway. The war is something that happens without God. Sin, is actually the absence of God, kind of.Truefusion:You are basically saying the same thing. I think it is important to realize that we do have a choice, we do need Christ, and we can pick Him. But it is up to you to choose Him. But instead everyone turns and blames a god they can't see or believe in as their excuse to not believe in Him. It is up to you guys.

[DaeFenris 0]

I'm in an inbetween place on my status of religion.I don't consider myself athiest, as I beleive something had to be there to help our solar system grow, and I also don't follow any sort of religious path.I'm just me. I live my life without having to prove or disprove an omnipresence. I don't understand why other people can't just leave people's beleifs alone.

[wild20 0]

Ahem? Did I force you to join in the discussion? I don't think so. That illustration is the best one ever. Why? Because I did not force you to join in, you did on your OWN FREE WILL. The same works with God. He doesn't force you, but He gives you a chance. It may have been a radio station airing an evangelistic series, a television show that asked people to come to God and believe in Him as their Lord and God. It may have even been at church, but the point is, He gave you a chance, He is giving you another right here as we speak. You have to accept it though. It is between you and God.You mentioned you are not atheist, but not religious. Which are you? There is actually no middle ground. You believe in God, or you don't. If you believe Aliens created you, then you don't believe in God. But seriously, the risk is great. There is no cost to follow God except His commandments, but rather, you would risk hell instead. Why? I would love for you to answer that for me. I am not preaching at you, but in Christ, I found something that nothing else could replace. It was amazing. The experience watching Him work is amazing. I displayed the facts back a few pages. You can accept it or not, the choice, is yours.

[True2Earn 0]

There is evidence for evolution after all! For evolution to be valid, something that is non-living must become living, for, according to this theory, at one time there was no life. I have found two examples of evidence in support of evolution:

 

1. Pinnocchio

2. Frosty the Snowman

 

This is undeniable proof that evolution must be true...

[homeloansnow 0]

wild20 -

 

Remember what I said, the Bible says we can't kill. But the problem is some Christians don't follow that.

 

While the 10 Commandment say "Thou shalt not kill" God establishes penalties for those that DO kill. That penalty is that the same is to be done to the killer. See Exodus 21:22-25 and Leviticus 24:17- 21 and Deuteronomy 19:16-21

 

You said that hristianity is just a copy of other religions? Please note that it is the oldest and existed even before there WERE other religions. It was not copied. Christianity is an offshoot of Judaism, the belief that there was a one true God. Christianity is just the belief that Jesus came and died for our sins. CHRISTianity. Judaism is the oldest religion though, dating back to before Babylon. Showing that the one TRUE God actually is one that stayed the same over the course of 4000 years before other religions sprang up.

 

Please take note that CHRISTIANITY (a belief in Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord) is predated by MANY religions. Jesus studied in the temples... what were temples doing there if there were no religions before Christianity?Why would God say "Thou shalt have no other gods before me" if there weren't religions that PREDATE His? Monotheistic religions were around long before Christianity, or even Judaism. While I respect your zeal, your FACTS are in error.

 

On your claim that the Bible as we know it today is the INSPIRED WORD OF GOD: Have you ever had the opportunity to see a complete copy of the Geneva Bible? It predates the King James, and has 80 books, not 66. This was the Bible that came over on the Mayflower. It was the Bible of John Bunyan, author of Pilgrims Progress. Why is the INSPIRED WORD OF GOD missing books? Wouldn't God ensure it stayed intact? The Bible we have today is far from complete. Here comes faith again: we have to take it on faith that those OTHER books were not necessary.

 

I am not saying I don't believe in God. I am saying I have a lot of questions about whether the God MAN teaches is the God we should be following. After all, isn't our relationship with God supposed to be a personal one? Weren't ministers supposed to spread the Word? Where in the Bible does it say they are supposed to TELL US WHAT TO BELIEVE? 2 Timothy tells us to "study to shew yourselves approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the Word of truth". Looks like the final decision of how and what we believe is up to us, based on OUR UNIQUE UNDERSTANDING OF GOD.

[Unregistered 018 0]

we breathe, we fight the fact that there is a God even if you are atheist, and miracles happen. not magic, not science but....

[caz2406 0]

I am one of those that seeing is believing, so until i see god i wont believe in him, the bible is too full of contradictions as well, so i don't reckon much to that either, i still feel the theory of evolution is more likely.Caz

[csp4.0 1]

Ok, this may sound wierd but lets compare some of this to real science.Scientists have found a massive void, from my point of view it could in fact be the centre of the Big Bang.But how did the big bang happen?What if God were a highly technological being who studied the 'Creation of Life'? what if he were an ascended being?Those people that say 'Seeing is believing' like the person above) are wrong, what if you took drugs and saw hallucinations? would you believe that they were real? no. And the end of the world... it could be anything...It could be from a comet (unlikely) to a full scale war with aother species (most likely) Why i said that the war was most likely was because in the bible, it says that Satan will come down and rule the planet, those who do not bow before him will be killed.So lets say at that point we were evolved enough to ascend. He kills those who won't bow before him those people ascend...He gives drugs for never ending life to his slaves so they would never acsend. So now lets say that the final war between the ascended beings and satan and his followers.Satan and his followers will die and ascend. BUT! they will go someplace else... The everlasting inferno... The Lake of Fire *dun dun DUN* ...

[thepiratedock 0]

Thats rediculouse, i suppose you dont beileive in global warming either? you know what i dont bielive in? the internet, it dosent exist! hey wait a second... my cat could disprove my thery, as well as he could yous.

[Mermaid711 0]

Thats rediculouse, i suppose you dont beileive in global warming either? you know what i dont bielive in? the internet, it dosent exist! hey wait a second... my cat could disprove my thery, as well as he could yous.

<spam patrol mode>
YOUU CANN NOOT SPEEL!

Spamming again... aren't we? Being rude to other members on this forum is against the rules and will have you banned. Dissagreeing is one thing, but being rude, while furthering your ignorance in spelling and gramatical errors is another thing.
</spam patrol mode>

ANYWAYS, there is more and more proof that Global warming isn't as big or bad as we thought. More and more proof. Just because you don't believe in something doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

And my cat could easily beat up your cat

Wild2o this is a very beautifully written topic. It credits both sides of the arguement.

I am a Christian, as you are also

But hasn't the Bible been around long than science as we know it? And since science and the Bible both show a begining and end of the world, isn't that proof enough?

[nelito0982 0]

WELL FIRST OF ALL THE FACT OF DENYING GOD IMPLLIES THAT YOU ARE RECOGNIZING HIS EXISTANCE. IS IT COOL?

[Karrukarru 0]

I'd like to put my 2 cents in as well.God is merely a creation of the human psyche. It fall along the lines with the fact that it is in our nature to blame others for things that happen. God is just an excuse to put the disorder of one’s own meaningless life info some sense of order and meaning, so really God is just an idea that takes the burden off people’s minds.On another idea of God; God is just another way of removing our anxieties about death. It isn’t a stretch to say that we all fear death, so God was “created” to give meaning or purpose to death and release the tension about death.Yet another valid theory on the origin of God is the theory of greed. God was created to base a religion behind and trick the working class out of their money.But what no one else really thought of here is that how can you put so much “faith” in the bible if all this about Adam and Eve and God ect if it was written hundreds/thousands of years after the fact? It at that point isn’t faith it is gullibility.

[Tetraca 0]

I am truly sorry for the crunching of your words into larger sections. I'm not allowed to have structured Q-A conversation apparently. Can we get rid of this quote limit?

 

Evolution itself is a solid FACT, and could be described as a scientific LAW (DIFFERENT than a theory in that it DESCRIBES A PROCCESS WE KNOW that occurs in the natural world, unlike a THEORY, which DESCRIBES HOW SOMETHING OCCCURS). Evolution THROUGH NATURAL SELECTION IS A THEORY, but it is a SCIENTIFIC THEORY, which is well tested and proven through the SCIENTIFIC METHOD before being recognised as a theory. It is NOT a THEORY in the layman's terms of the word, which makes it easy to make a straw man argument against it because you think that it is just as well thought out as a HYPOTHESIS, which is NOT A THEORY.

 

Evolution ISN'T just believed by atheists alone. I am a freethought and I believe in evolution. Only organised religion tries to discredit evolution.

 

The evolutionist believes that the world began when a “Big Bang” caused an instantaneous creation of the universe.

No. The universe was already there. It was just a rediculously hot mass of energy. Then it expanded into something which could be capable of housing vast galaxies and even life after several billion years of development.

 

But wait, there is more. You see we weren’t here yet. We were just organisms in the ocean.

 

- The big bang does not discredit theism at all. It was meant to be agnostic as a deity could have set the universe in motion at this stage.

 

- You couldn't call the first life forms "organisms". The first "life forms" were viruses, which are not technically alive from a scientific point of view. These things eventually grew organelles, and became cells, which in turn banded together to create multicellular organisms, which in turn branched out into many, many creatures.

 

What we were before that, I have no idea probably sludge or something.

 

But let’s move on. We evolved, slowly through a process of selection until we started to be perfected, with the fit surviving. Strange huh?

- Before we were creatures, we were viruses, and before that, we were a bunch of protein chains and amino acids, which would bond together in chemical reactions to eventually create a form of life.

 

- This is not evolution. This is natural selection, which can be disproven, but is the most well accepted theory.

 

Now, with evolutions theory, we will soon become perfect.

 

Evolution says that the organism needs only enough brain or knowledge to become smart.

 

The earlier civilizations, by evolution’s standards, were dumb. But here we meet a conflict. An evolutionist took an Indian never in contact with the civilized world, and gave him the best education. In 10 years, he was a world-class scholar.

No, we would not become perfect. You can't become perfect. Evolution adapts us to the environment which we live in through mutation. This is why you can't place a goldfish in the ocean.

 

Evolution has nothing on intelligence. You're mixing two different things. Also, in order for an organism to become smart it must have the capacity to learn.

 

This has nothing to do with evolution unless you are just a plain racist. Humans belong to a single species and can do the same things as another human in another region or another point in time if exposed to the right people. However, if you were to try an teach a neanderthal how to speak you might end up running into a problem because they aren't humans, they are neanderthals - close but no cigar.

 

Evolution is useful mutation through the reproductive process, it is not development of a nonphysical chracteristic.

 

You see, we find a mysterious link that seems to be missing.

The missing link is irrelavent due to our knowledge today. Drastic mutation is possible, and if you need a link Australopithecus afarensis is considered the so called "missing link" along with Australopithecus africanus, Sinanthropus pekinensis, and several other former animals.

 

We find a point in time where we were dumb, and were still meeting the needs we required to stay alive.

 

May I ask why we have knowledge today to have technologically advanced minds, but other animals don’t.

- We don't need to have high intelligence to simply exist. Just look at a modern day ape or any animal for that matter. They don't have high intelligence but they exist.

 

- Because we evolved for a need for a certain fork of ape which needed to have toolmaking abilities. Mutation makes interesting things. That's why no two species are ever alike.

 

If there is a chance for anything to become an intelligent being, than why don’t we see more? Why just us?

 

But more then that, evolution claims we evolved, working our way up in the “system” until we are here today. If we came from fish, why did we come from them?

 

And if we did, why are fish still here if they are inferior

There are two reasons why:

a) Apes do not require that adaptation, as they can already use tools for all their needs, and the other species simply weren't lucky enough.

When such a mutation occurs, it seems to be very rare, and when it does happen, it is certain to wipe out the entire species with its superiourity.

 

Because originally all life was contained to the oceans. Eventually creatures mutated to be able to come on land probably to save themselves from other animals in the ocean, and it ended up becoming plentiful.

 

At that stage of development, they weren't inferior, and when the land crawling animals finally came, the seas loosened up and the need for such adaptations ended up dying.

 

After all, fish get eaten, we don’t, the fish shouldn’t be here right now, we should have stomped them out through “natural selection”.

 

You see, evolution is just a theory. Science is a fact. I see evolution taught in all sorts of ways, but always in schools. Especially in public schools, but especially in science class. But why when science is out of comprehension and cannot be proven? Like I said, just a theory. Now lets look at some more arguments for God.

Evolution takes very long periods of time, and as a species which has been mutated into intelligence, we are smart enough not to drain our food supply. In addition, those buggers are able to reproduce pretty quickly due to the numbers.

 

This is the straw man argument which creationists use. Remember, there is a thing called the SCIENTIFIC METHOD, and EVOLUTION IS A FACT. NATURAL SELECTION IS A THEORY, and NATURAL SELECTION IS NOT A LAYMAN THEORY! IT IS SCIENTIFIC THEORY! There is a difference! It wasn't a guess, it actually has much data based on observations to support it, OR IT WOULDN'T BE ACCEPTED AS A THEORY BY THE SCIENTIFIC COMMUNITY.

 

Unfortunately there are arguments against creationists, sorry.

 

For example, if the six days were metaphorical and they actually represented periods in which the universe developed, we would have land based plants before we had enough carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to support them.

 

1Co 15:41 shows an easily observable event. Stars can be seen to have different magnitudes by simple observation of the sky, and it implies that the sun is not a star, which is false.

And Jon 2:5 implies that there are weeds on the ocean floor. Nothing lives there outside near the sulphurous crags which are not mentioned.

Jon 2:7 ignores the fact that you would never be able to go down into the bottom of a mountain unless you were to jump into a volcano. Mountains are upheavals of the continental crust due to the shift of tectonic plates. You would have to travel through solid rock and dirt to get into the bottom of a mountain unless you wanted to fry in molten rock after going through the mid-atlantic ridge.

Jer 33:22 says that the amount of sand of the sea is immeasurable. It is, and so is the number of stars in our galaxy if we had enough time. It might not be six thousand, but it isn't disproving anything.

 

There is another little thing, from a novel called 1984, which you might be familiar with: He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the future controls the present.

 

For all you know this could be a 2007 year old lie which was based on a character used by the original apostles to teach morals, but ended up as a tool of control by the churches, and completely lost after the middle ages. I would only trust a Roman document showing his name queued for execution.

 

However, what about the rock? Where did it come from? It didn’t get there on its own as you can imagine.

It didn't. It was a scatter of atoms that joined together in a hot molt in a nebula most of which went into the sun, and some into planets which orbit around us after the concauction became a neutron star and no longer needed the extra matter. The matter orbited around for years, in the case of our inner planets becoming a rocky molt before cooling. The rock is merely a product of weathering, erosion, and contact with animals.

 

Let me show you something:

This image is called Pale Blue Dot, and it was taken by Voyager 1. Here is what the late Carl Sagan said about his dot:

We succeeded in taking that picture [from deep space], and, if you look at it, you see a dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you know, everyone you love, everyone you've ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of all our joys and sufferings, thousands of confident religions, ideologies and economic doctrines. Every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilizations, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every hopeful child, every mother and father, every inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every superstar, every supreme leader, every saint and sinner in the history of our species, lived there - on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

 

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that in glory and triumph they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of the dot on scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner of the dot. How frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe, are challenged by this point of pale light.

 

Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity -- in all this vastness -- there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. It is up to us. It's been said that astronomy is a humbling, and I might add, a character-building experience. To my mind, there is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly and compassionately with one another and to preserve and cherish this pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.

 

Here is another quote by Carl Sagan which you might want to think about:

Ann Druyan suggest an experiment: Look back again at the pale blue dot of the preceding chapter. Take a good long look at it. Stare at the dot for any length of time and then try to convince yourself that God created the whole Universe for one of the 10 million or so species of life that inhabit that speck of dust. Now take it a step further: Imagine that everything was made just for a single shade of that species, or gender, or ethnic or religious subdivision. If this doesn't strike you as unlikely, pick another dot. Imagine it to be inhabited by a different form of intelligent life. They, too, cherish the notion of a God who has created everything for their benefit. How seriously do you take their claim?

 

I for one, refuse to believe in a big brother diety that cares what the small creatures on an insignificantly sized dirtball in a middle of a galaxy could care about what we do here.

[laexter 0]

Now my point, I believe in being able to argue both sides of the puzzle, it helps to keep an open mind. I believe in God (or at least a body which is better in all ways to myself, and all humanity) in principle, I don't believe that he controls all aspects of my life, I conpaire it to a piece of open source software, God is the origional programer, he made the software to his specifications, but after releasing it on the internet lets it grow and 'evolve' into its own software. Thus is also accept the theories of evolution. You want more Evidence, try this, right now we are faced with the problem of calling it Christmas, it not right because not everybody practices christmas, but many groups have simmilar celibrations, with many of the same themes. It is similar evidence to this that is used to argue atlantis, at about the same time historicaly on diffrent parts of the world (seperated by oceans) stories are carved in stone that a tell a similar thing, of a civilization who had hot running water and many advanced technologies, that sunk under the ocean. It would seem that the only way for this story to be told around the world would be for a group of people to have escaped the sinking and traveled around the world telling their story!

Nice analogy. But I have an alternative:
Suppose that a species so much more intelligent than humans has an ability to create a universe and everything inside it, and s/he has the ability to view everything inside the universe. This makes sense because the universe can be only a computer simulation (like The Sims). S/he created our universe for a purpose, possibly for a research, for a student project, or just for fun.

This way, s/he as The God can do everything:
* God can choose one or two or three people as "prime object", who are consistenly observed upon. Sometimes these people are given some special properties to make him/her a bit different from the others. God can even give "divine revelation" to someone. This explains Jesus, Mohammad or whatever prophet there ever was.
* God can set up the laws of evolution so that His/Her job becomes easier. Remember, God's purpose is a fascinating world, and creating one is hard, so a bit of randomness probably will help.
* The rules of physics, chemistry, etc. is very easy to explain as God has full control of the "simulation".
* God can create everything at once along with the food.
* Everyone of us is meaningful to God, as useful data (which must be handed to the professor?); as a candidate for God to observe closer (probably people like presidents are observed a lot of times); as "helpers" for people God is observing. (if God wants something to happen to a person for the sake of His/Her experiment, God would not want it to happen miraculously but instead very naturally through the hands of people/things around, and it is easier to do that in a simulation rather than tampering with the database!)
* God can make the universe anything God wishes, even expanding it only to see the feedback of human scientists.
* God may have already set up multiple civilizations in multiple planets, probably because creating a universe is expensive and God can not afford the whole universe to fail; so God made parallel civilizations to observe.
* Our history is maybe a "divine intervention" - a plot by the God, or it is purely the acts of the "simulation objects" - that is, humans.
* So our discovery of DNA is really just an intelligent AI discovering how to program in the scripting language the AI was programmed in.
* Mystics, mythology, occultism, ghosts, magic probably do exist, it could be a kind of "bug" in the simulation program where humans can command the simulation to do something beyond the usual physical/chemical constraints.

So much things can be explained by this model, probably God does really exist!

After all, fish get eaten, we dont, the fish shouldnt be here right now, we should have stomped them out through natural selection.

Tetraca was right about how an intelligent species would be intelligent enough not to delete their food from earth. However we see even now that some species (specii? specieses?) go extinct - that is because they do not develop well enough, and humans do not eat them. (we may be taking their furs, tusks or whatever but those minor needs can go away without people noticing)