@KAG,

For some reason I could have sworn you are male!! I think you are the only female atheist on this forum.

This one should keep us all thinking for a while.

This  is a true story of something that happened just a few years ago at  USC.


There  was a professor of philosophy there who was a deeply committed atheist.   


His  primary goal for one required class was to spend the entire semester to prove  that God couldn't exist.


His  students were always afraid to argue with him because of his impeccable  logic.


Sure,  some had argued in class at times, but no one had ever really gone against him  because of his reputation.


At  the end of every semester on the last day, he would say to his class of 300  students, "If there is anyone here who still believes in Jesus, stand up!"   


In  twenty years, no one had ever stood up. They knew what he was going to do next.  He would say, "Because anyone who believes in God is a  fool".


If  God existed, he could stop this piece of chalk from hitting the ground and  breaking. Such a simple task to prove that He is God, and yet He can't do  it."


And  every year, he would drop the chalk onto the tile floor of the classroom and it  would shatter into a hundred pieces.


All  of the students would do nothing but stop and stare.


Most  of the students thought that God couldn't exist. Certainly, a number of  Christians had slipped through, but! for 20 years, they had been too afraid to  stand up.


Well,  a few years ago there was a freshman who happened to  enroll.


He  was a Christian, and had heard the stories about his  professor.


He  was required to take the class for his major, and he was afraid. But for three  months that semester, he prayed every morning that he would have the courage to  stand up no matter what the professor said, or what the class thought.   


Nothing  they said could ever shatter his faith, he hoped.


Finally,  the day came. ! The professor said, "If there is anyone here who still believes  in God, stand up!" The professor and the class of 300 people looked at him,  shocked, as he stood up at the back of the classroom.


The  professor shouted, "You FOOL!!!


If  God existed, he would keep this piece of chalk from breaking when it hit the  ground!"


He  proceeded to drop the chalk, but as he did, it slipped out of his fingers, off  his shirt cuff, onto the pleat of his pants, down his leg, and off his shoe. As  it hit the ground, it simply rolled away unbroken. The professor's jaw dropped  as he stared at the chalk. He looked up at the young man, and then ran out of  the lecture hall.


The  young man who had stood, proceeded to walk to the front of the room and shared  his faith in Jesus for the next half hour. 300 students stayed and listened as  he told of God's love for them and of His power through Jesus.   


This  is not intended to be a joke, it's not funny, it's intended to get you  thinking, 


Isn't  it funny how simple it is for people to trash God and then wonder why the  world's going to hell.


Isn't  it funny how we believe what the newspapers, CNN, Science says, but question what the Bible  says.


Isn't  it funny how everyone wants to go to heaven provided they do not have to  believe, think, say, or do anything the Bible says. Or is it scary?   


Isn't  it funny how someone can say "I believe in God" but still follow  Satan


(who,  by the way, also "believes" in God ).


Isn't  it funny how you can send a thousand! jokes through e-mail and they spread like  wildfire,


but  when you start sending messages regarding the Lord, people think twice about  sharing.


Isn't  it funny how the lewd, crude, vulgar and obscene pass freely through cyberspace,  but the public discussion of Jesus is suppressed in the school and  workplace.


Isn't  it funny how someone can be so fired up for Christ on Sunday, but be an  invisible
Christian the rest of the week.


Are  you laughing? !

Think about it.

There is a Supreme being in heaven. GDO exists and the earlier you believe this fact the better.

Take care all and stay blessed.

freelance, instead of posting these gratuitous fake testimonies, you should better enter a real debate with a well grounded atheist, but I guess that would be a little over your head

Freelance, don't tell us you imagine that story is a true one? If so , where did it happen, when, and prove it. If not, what's your point?

One of the main reasons I think religion is a waste of time is that, like anything else, it just goes through fashions. There have been hundreds and probably thousands of different religions in the world. Christianity is big now, but it came into existance only recently, and it'll be overtaken by something else. Same as all current religions. Not one has ever endured. If there was a god or gods - don't you think he/she/it could be clear and just have one religion, with one message?  How can you assume that Christianity is 'real' and yet the Hindu gods don't exist. The Hindus believe their gods are real and that the Christian one doesn't exist. The ancient Greeks had their gods. So did the Romans. so did the Axtecs. So did the Vikings. So did every culture, but now all their gods are just stories to us now, but they were 100% 'real' to the people then. All religions come into being and then die out. atheists just see this and understand that there isn't a final actual religious 'reality' at all. Current religions are no different to the ancient dead ones in the level of belief from their followers. A real deity would make its mind up about what it was and how it wanted to be worshiped, and would be able to communicate this effectively to all people.

freelance:

This one should keep us all thinking for a while.

This  is a true story of something that happened just a few years ago at  USC.

Dear God, if you're real, have a word with your followers. Help them see that urban legends are not the way to go and that really people have brains and intend to use them. Tanks. Lechaim.

mrmayor:

@KAG,

For some reason I could have sworn you are male!! I think you are the only female atheist on this forum.

I have gender issues.

English1:

1. it just goes through fashions . . . Christianity is big now, but it came into existance only recently[/b], and it'll be overtaken by something else.
2. Same as all current religions. Not one has ever endured.
3. If there was a god or gods - don't you think he/she/it could be clear and just have one religion, with one message?
4. How can you assume that Christianity is 'real' and yet the Hindu gods don't exist. T
5. but now all their gods are just stories to us now, but they were 100% 'real' to the people then.
6. All religions come into being and then die out. atheists just see this and understand that there isn't a final actual religious 'reality' at all.
7. Current religions are no different to the ancient dead ones in the level of belief from their followers. A real deity would make its mind up about what it was and how it wanted to be worshiped, and would be able to communicate this effectively to all people.

My dear friend, i listed some of your points to make it easier to cut across them.

1. Christianity is not a recent religion, its more than 2000 years old. Besides it is has the same God with the Jewish religions before it. As a matter of fact Christianity is the refined Jewish religion so that makes it quite old indeed - seeing that the Jews trace their religion from the exact beginning of time.

2. I think the above says at least one religion has endured through time.

3. Yes there is a God and He has made himself clear through the bible. He has made himself clear through Jesus Christ, the grace of God that has appeared in human form to bring salvation to men. The mistake you make here is that you assume that God made out all this different religions but Jesus made such huge claims, one of them is when he says -

I am the way, the truth and the life, no one comes to the father but by me John 14:6

Again, in other quotations, he goes as far as calling the others liars and thieves. This points to something, if he is indeed true - which he is - then this is the only true way to God.

4. Simple, Christianity negates every other gods and if Christianity is true, then every other god is false and vice versa. Although we acknowledge the existence of these other beings, we know that they are really demons parading themselves as gods to be worshiped.

5. It is either something is real or is not. It cant be real years ago and is not today. There is a big difference between belief and Truth. No matter how long one believes in a lie, the lie can never be true and it would be uncovered one day.

6. With this logic on why atheist are who they are i suppose i could use this for fake products too - Oh there are just so many fake currencies, films and cds that they have been uncovered, they can be no true one then. God would not die out, Jesus would not and he has promised that those who believe in him would live forever too.

7. I've dealt with part of this earlier, but for the rest a real deity - God and father of our Saviour Jesus Christ - has made himself known already, it is left for us to either look at history, evidence and believe or to ignore the rest and doubt. About God's success in convincing every one about himself - i guess you make the rules for how a deity should be and how he should operate.

I sincerely pray that as much people that have not known God and Jesus come to know him and accept him. He offers much more than this life can ever give.

@somze,
nice rejoinder.
i considered replying English1 but then i observed that, like nferyn earlier said, she's not a "well grounded atheist"   and so i held my peace.
@English1
at the risk of leading someone on in a path i don't agree with, i suggest you get a firm grounding in atheism; so at least you'd be good at what you do. but i think the better thing to say would be what somze said; that you would come to know Him.
@all,
sincerely i don't think anyone can categorically say if the story is true or not except we went to USC to find out; in which case it can be still be denied.
However, personally, i don't subscribe to anecdotes. there are better and more effective ways of leading people to Him. Cheers.

somze:

My dear friend, i listed some of your points to make it easier to cut across them.

1. Christianity is not a recent religion, its more than 2000 years old. Besides it is has the same God with the Jewish religions before it. As a matter of fact Christianity is the refined Jewish religion so that makes it quite old indeed - seeing that the Jews trace their religion from the exact beginning of time.

While it's debatable that the Jewish and Christian God are the same (IMO the two are about as similar as the Muslim God and Christian God), I don't think it's right to say that Jews can trace their religion to the beginning of time. The Jewish religion - as it is categorized now - is most likely about 6,000 - 10,000 years old at most.

Wow, reading through this thread again kinda gave me a nostalgic feeling. I remember this thread very well, I was still somewhere between Christianity and agnosticism then. I wonder where all these guys are now: nferyn, KAG (NL's "first generation" atheists), ricadelide, etc. Good ol' times!

By the way, this quote below explains quite well what I've been labouring to explain to Mr_Anony lately on the problem of evil. This man simply put it in a few sentences so brilliantly.

nferyn:
I'm getting mired up in several threads at the same time, sometimes I don't know what to respond to first. Here I just copy my contribution from another thread:

1. Falsification on logical grounds:

The omnipotent, omnibenevolent and omniscient God is self contradictory: omnipotence and omniscience contradict the fact that God, in his holy books, has needs, wants and desires: an omniscient, omnipotent God cannot have needs and wants because reality cannot be anything but the emmanation of God's mere being. As reality is not the emmanation of God's wants (God having negative feelings about his creation: sorrow, sadness, anger, etc), he cannot be both omnipotent and omniscient at the same time.

Omnipotence, omniscience, omnibenevolence and the problem of evil in the world: with an omnimax God evil cannot exist in this world, because everything God wants, just is. If God doesn't want evil to exist, it wouldn't, as God is omnipotent and omniscient. Evil exists, thus God is either not omnibenevolent or he isn't omniscient and omnipotent at the same time. The classical apologetical anwser to this contradiction is the existence of free will, but that's only a weak defense, as free will logically implies choice, choice implies an indeterminate future, an indeterminate future contradicts God's omniscience. Even if you would assume that intentional evil (as being carried out by independent agents, such as humans) could be explained away by waving the free will card - which it can't on logical grounds - the problem of natural evil (earthquakes, droughts, tsunami's, etc) still remains.

Purist: Wow, reading through this thread again kinda gave me a nostalgic feeling. I remember this thread very well, I was still somewhere between Christianity and agnosticism then. I wonder where all these guys are now: nferyn, KAG (NL's "first generation" atheists), ricadelide, etc. Good ol' times!

By the way, this quote below explains quite well what I've been labouring to explain to Mr_Anony lately on the problem of evil. This man simply put it in a few sentences so brilliantly.

His logic is a failed one.

^^ Because you said so?

Purist: ^^ Because you said so?

Because freewill can coexist with omnipotence & omniscience in principle.