.

I Just Had An Epiphany..If The Universe Created Itself, Then That Means That G/gods Didnt Create The Universe Which To Me Throws A Major Spanner In The Works Of Major Religions And, If The Universe In All Its "early" Chaos Couldnt Create Itself Then What Are The Chances Of Intelligent Beigns That Create Universes Popping Out From No Where?..Hmmmnn

God is not science with logical reasonings. Don't expect to add 1 plus 1 = 2 with God. I would advise you keep an open mind then tell Him, you want to know Him.

ammyluv2002:
God is not science with logical reasonings. Don't expect to add 1 plus 1 = 2 with God. I would advise you keep an open mind then tell Him, you want to know Him.

If God Is Real Then I Want To Meet Him (i Mean See Him)..Serious

Abso1uteZero:
If God Is Real Then I Want To Meet Him (i Mean See Him)..Serious

God cannot be seen except for few cases in the bible, but you can always feel His presence. Like I said earlier, all you need to do is ask! Seek Him wholeheartedly

ammyluv2002:
God cannot be seen except for few cases in the bible, but you can always feel His presence. Like I said earlier, all you need to do is ask! Seek Him wholeheartedly

Im Not Looking For "presence" Im Looking Fop PROOF For Or Against..Thanks For Your Reply

Abso1uteZero:
Im Not Looking For "presence" Im Looking Fop PROOF For Or Against..Thanks For Your Reply

Okay! Just hold on. Promise to have an open mind at least?

Sanchez01, biko bia o! I need you right now....our brother here needs answers.

ammyluv2002:
Okay! Just hold on. Promise to have an open mind at least?

Sanchez01, biko bia o! I need you right now....our brother here needs answers.

okay

ammyluv2002:
Okay! Just hold on. Promise to have an open mind at least?

Sanchez01, biko bia o! I need you right now....our brother here needs answers.

An open mind is most likely going to get him away from the God you have in mind. Trust me on this.

Ranchhoddas:
An open mind is most likely going to get him away from the God you have in mind. Trust me on this.

she think say she one win soul for god na

Ranchhoddas:
An open mind is most likely going to get him away from the God you have in mind. Trust me on this.

I Do Not Understand..Could You Expand?

Ranchhoddas:
An open mind is most likely going to get him away from the God you have in mind. Trust me on this.

He has some doubts about God, but taking away those doubts will help him get a clear picture. He should start on a fresh note

stephenmorris:
she think say she one win soul for god na

Leave am. She has no idea.

Ranchhoddas:
Leave am. She has no idea.

bro, Are You Going To Tell Me What You Are On About Or What?

Abso1uteZero:
If God Is Real Then I Want To Meet Him (i Mean See Him)..Serious

You say you want to meet God! How? Why?

What to you would be an adequate God meeting experience?

What would this meeting experience serve? Just to prove Him to you or to create a relationship with Him?

God cannot meet you on your terms but on His terms as no flesh can withstand the glory of His presence and if he does decide to meet you how would you know He is the one? What would suffice for you?

Answer my questions then we can talk better.

Abso1uteZero:
I Do Not Understand..Could You Expand?

Being open-minded entails looking at every argument that you are confronted with using the same level of scrutiny. From my experience, the non-believers usually present more compelling arguments. An open-mind seven out of ten times will lead away from God, especially the God that Ammyluv2002 is trying to present.

ammyluv2002:
Okay! Just hold on. Promise to have an open mind at least?

Sanchez01, biko bia o! I need you right now....our brother here needs answers.

I'm here... Sorry I was away still celebrating Real's win over Sporting. I think I could help explain a thing or two to him though. We pray he keeps his mind open.

Sanchez01:

I'm here... Sorry I was away still celebrating Real's win over Sporting. I think I could help explain a thing or two to him though. We pray he keeps his mind open.

Thank you jare

4everGod:


You say you want to meet God! How? Why?

What to you would be an adequate God meeting experience?

What would this meeting experience serve? Just to prove Him to you or to create a relationship with Him?

God cannot meet you on your terms but on His terms as no flesh can withstand the glory of His presence and if he does decide to meet you how would you know He is the one? What would suffice for you?

.

First Of All, I Will Assume You Re Talking About The Christain God; If So Then You Should Be Telling 'Me' How Cause I Do Not Know.How Did You Meet Him?..Why? Because Im Curious If There Is Someone That Powerful, Then I Want To Know...For Your Third Question It Will Put My Doubt To Rest And Make Me Take The Bible Seriously..As For Your Other Paragraph, Until Your God Proves His Existence, I Cant Take Any Of It Seriously And Will Continue To Use Logic Cause Proof I Believe, Logic I Can Get Behind But Unfounded Superstition Based On Emotion Is A No

4everGod:


You say you want to meet God! How? Why?

What to you would be an adequate God meeting experience?

What would this meeting experience serve? Just to prove Him to you or to create a relationship with Him?

God cannot meet you on your terms but on His terms as no flesh can withstand the glory of His presence and if he does decide to meet you how would you know He is the one? What would suffice for you?

Answer my questions then we can talk better.

How Did You Know He Was The One?

4everGod:


You say you want to meet God! How? Why?

What to you would be an adequate God meeting experience?

What would this meeting experience serve? Just to prove Him to you or to create a relationship with Him?

God cannot meet you on your terms but on His terms as no flesh can withstand the glory of His presence and if he does decide to meet you how would you know He is the one? What would suffice for you?

Answer my questions then we can talk better.

also, I Have Questions For You Too. Who Is God, Where Does He Come, How Did He Make Trees, Animals, Humans, The Universe? Unless God Is A Genious Scientist With Advanced Technology Then I Really Dont Know

Abso1uteZero:
So, I Will Try To Be As Short As Possible...The Truth Is I Dont Know If There Is A Name For My Stand Regarding Religion So I Would Be Grateful If Someone Could Help Me Out.. I Do Not Think There Is/are G/gods But The Same Argument Could Be Made About G/gods Existence For Me Because Neither Sides Have Inequovical Proof( I Do Not Know If That Word Really Fits The Story I Am Telling Haha Forgive Me. I Couldnt Find A Better One)..The Main Argument For Me Against Religion Would Be The Lack Of Physical Evidence And The Long Standing Question Of Who Created G/gods Since Logically Something Cannot Be Created From Nothing And Our Limited Science Have Not Been Able To Say Otherwise But This Also Is My Main Argument About Against Since Science Havent Been Able To Show That The Universe Was Created Out Of Nothing And How ...So, Until There Is Proof For Or Against I Have Decided To Keep An Open Mind..So,what Do You Guys Think?

Truth be told, I understand you perfectly and where you're coming from. Getting a better, objective scale and asking questions on grey areas makes it easier in defining and find a path.

Unfortunately, no man can see God. Not even those closest to Him did; Moses, Elijah and Elisha. Enough of the Bible now, let's come down to things we can see and interact with; I'd be raising my point from a very interesting topic I've kept close to my heart over the years. A book titled: 20 Arguments to God's Existence, which has now been laid bare on a website.

12. The Argument from the Origin of the Idea of God

This argument, made famous by Rene Descartes, has a kinship to the ontological argument (13). It starts from the idea of God. But it does not claim that real being is part of the content of that idea, as the ontological argument does. Rather it seeks to show that only God himself could have caused this idea to arise in our minds.

It would be impossible for us to reproduce the whole context Descartes gives for this proof (see his third Meditation), and fruitless to follow his scholastic vocabulary. We give below the briefest summary and discussion.

We have ideas of many things.

These ideas must arise either from ourselves or from things outside us.
One of the ideas we have is the idea of God—an infinite, all-perfect being.
This idea could not have been caused by ourselves, because we know ourselves to be limited and imperfect, and no effect can be greater than its cause.
Therefore, the idea must have been caused by something outside us which has nothing less than the qualities contained in the idea of God.
But only God himself has those qualities.
Therefore God himself must be the cause of the idea we have of him.
Therefore God exists.

Consider the following common objection. The idea of God can easily arise like this: we notice degrees of perfection among finite beings—some are more perfect (or less imperfect) than others. And to reach the idea of God, we just project the scale upward and outward to infinity.

Thus there seems to be no need for an actually existing God to account for the existence of the idea. All we need is the experience of things varying in degrees of perfection, and a mind capable of thinking away perceived limitations.

But is that really enough? How can we think away limitation or imperfection unless we first recognize it as such? And how can we recognize it as such unless we already have some notion of infinite perfection? To recognize things as imperfect or finite involves the possession of a standard in thought that makes the recognition possible.

Does that seem farfetched? It does not mean that toddlers spend their time thinking about God. But it does mean that, however late in life you use the standard, however long before it comes explicitly into consciousness, still, the standard must be there in order for you to use it. But where did it come from? Not from your experience of yourself or of the world that exists outside you. For the idea of infinite perfection is already presupposed in our thinking about all these things and judging them imperfect. Therefore none of them can be the origin of the idea of God; only God himself can be that.

http://www.strangenotions.com/god-exists/#12

Would still post other aspects of the Argument as times goes on, hopefully. To the question, does God exist? The simple answer is yes! He does exist but not exactly the way we'd want Him to.

Do you believe in the three parts of man, namely the body, soul and spirit?
If no, it then means that questions bothering on heaven and hell are lies and fairy tales. And if yes, then it means you wholly agree to the concept of ghosts and spirits. And assuming you still stick to your guns on the physical and empirical, that would mean stories of supernatural forces, stories of ghosts that have been escalated all over the world are nothing but figments of someone's imaginations.

Would the world would have been able to form and come out beautiful by chain chemical reactions? I think not. The perfection of the world is not some cook up chemicals but the hand of being, whom we cannot see. Regardless, how then do we describe the way humans are fashion as? Could it have been sheer coincidences for all humans, regardless of colour, size and background to have the same anatomical structure? Does it imply that something, somewhere fashioned us as a model after another thing?

Let's take another argument, now, shall we?

16. The Argument from Desire

Every natural, innate desire in us corresponds to some real object that can satisfy that desire.
But there exists in us a desire which nothing in time, nothing on earth, no creature can satisfy.
Therefore there must exist something more than time, earth and creatures, which can satisfy this desire.

This something is what people call "God" and "life with God forever."

The first premise implies a distinction of desires into two kinds: innate and externally conditioned, or natural and artificial. We naturally desire things like food, drink, sex, sleep, knowledge, friendship and beauty; and we naturally shun things like starvation, loneliness, ignorance and ugliness. We also desire (but not innately or naturally) things like sports cars, political office, flying through the air like Superman, the land of Oz and a Red Sox world championship.

Now there are differences between these two kinds of desires. We do not, for example, for the most part, recognize corresponding states of deprivation for the second, the artificial, desires, as we do for the first. There is no word like "Ozlessness" parallel to "sleeplessness." But more importantly, the natural desires come from within, from our nature, while the artificial ones come from without, from society, advertising or fiction. This second difference is the reason for a third difference: the natural desires are found in all of us, but the artificial ones vary from person to person.

The existence of the artificial desires does not necessarily mean that the desired objects exist. Some do; some don't. Sports cars do; Oz does not. But the existence of natural desires does, in every discoverable case, mean that the objects desired exist. No one has ever found one case of an innate desire for a nonexistent object.

The second premise requires only honest introspection. If someone denies it and says, "I am perfectly happy playing with mud pies, or sports cars, or money, or sex, or power," we can only ask, "Are you, really?" But we can only appeal, we cannot compel. And we can refer such a person to the nearly universal testimony of human history in all its great literature. Even the atheist Jean-Paul Sartre admitted that "there comes a time when one asks, even of Shakespeare, even of Beethoven, 'Is that all there is?'"

The conclusion of the argument is not that everything the Bible tells us about God and life with God is really so. What it proves is an unknown X, but an unknown whose direction, so to speak, is known. This X is more: more beauty, more desirability, more awesomeness, more joy. This X is to great beauty as, for example, great beauty is to small beauty or to a mixture of beauty and ugliness. And the same is true of other perfections.

But the "more" is infinitely more, for we are not satisfied with the finite and partial. Thus the analogy (X is to great beauty as great beauty is to small beauty) is not proportionate. Twenty is to ten as ten is to five, but infinite is not to twenty as twenty is to ten. The argument points down an infinite corridor in a definite direction. Its conclusion is not "God" as already conceived or defined, but a moving and mysterious X which pulls us to itself and pulls all our images and concepts out of themselves.

I understand the posts are lengthy but trust me, I'm sure you'll find them interesting

Continued...

In other words, the only concept of God in this argument is the concept of that which transcends concepts, something "no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the human heart conceived" (1 Cor. 2:9). In other words, this is the real God.
C. S. Lewis, who uses this argument in a number of places, summarizes it succinctly:

"Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for these desires exists. A baby feels hunger; well, there is such a thing as food. A dolphin wants to swim; well, there is such a thing as water. Men feel sexual desire; well, there is such a thing as sex. If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world." (Mere Christianity, Bk. III, chap. 10, "Hope"

Question 1: How can you know the major premise—that every natural desire has a real object—is universally true, without first knowing that this natural desire also has a real object? But that is the conclusion. Thus you beg the question. You must know the conclusion to be true before you can know the major premise.

Often wondered how fashionable and orderly the universe is and how everything plays out naturally? Well, the truth is that, it is not the work of some cause and effect. Just as scientists would readily play God down, Architects, overtime have also claimed they don't believe in God but in design. Quite true, but one must come to realize that the aesthetics they cherish so much is not realized by chemicals. How possible is it for chemicals to dictate and order the nature of things in the universe? How are chain reactions from heaven knows where able to trigger and fashion humans with the necessary organs up to reproductive tools within a living organism? The same reaction, perhaps made sure that animals also had reproductive organs to make sure they procreate and all? No! All these are clearly the works of a perfect architect, who not only understands order but placements and how organisms live and sustain their lives.

[quote author=Sanchez01 post=49366725]
Truth be told, I understand you perfectly and where you're coming from. Getting a better, objective scale and asking questions on grey areas makes it easier in defining and find a path.

Unfortunately, no man can see God. Not even those closest to Him did; Moses, Elijah and Elisha. Enough of the Bible now, let's come down to things we can see and interact with; I'd be raising my point from a very interesting topic I've kept close to my heart over the years. A book titled: 20 Arguments to God's Existence, which has now been laid bare on a website.


http://www.strangenotions.com/god-exists/#12

Would still post other aspects of the Argument as times goes on, hopefully. To the question, does God exist? The simple answer is yes! He does exist but not exactly the way we'd want Him to.
/////////////////////////

I Do Not Have The Idea That There Is An Infinite And All Perfect God..So I Dont Know If That Works

[quote author=Sanchez01 post=49366831]Let's take another argument, now, shall we?

16. The Argument from Desire

Every natural, innate desire in us corresponds to some real object that can satisfy that desire.
But there exists in us a desire which nothing in time, nothing on earth, no creature can satisfy.
Therefore there must exist something more than time, earth and creatures, which can satisfy this desire.

This something is what people call "God" and "life with God forever."

////////////////////////////////
I Do Not Desire ' God' Or To Be With ' God' Forever..When I Die, I Want To Die/rest..I Do Not Think This Works..As For The ' X' Thing, I Do Not Understand..Throw More Light.

Question 1: How can you know the major premise—that every natural desire//////////////////////////// I Have Answered This Question.. I Do Not Have The Natural Desire To Know God Or Be With Him Forever.The Only Reason We Are Having This Conversation Is Because I Am Curious About The Origin Of The Universe And Kept An Open Mind Not To Sweep The Creation Story Under The Rug Because Science Cannot Tell Us It Didnt Categorically Happen Ie Im Giving It The Benefit Of The Doubt Until Theres Proof.I Really Do Not Know How This Helps.

Sanchez01:
Often wondered how fashionable and orderly the universe is and how everything plays out naturally? Well, the truth is that, it is not the work of some cause and effect. Just as scientists would readily play God down, Architects, overtime have also claimed they don't believe in God but in design. Quite true, but one must come to realize that the aesthetics they cherish so much is not realized by chemicals. How possible is it for chemicals to dictate and order the nature of things in the universe?

I Kept An Open Mind So I Would Plead You To Do The Same..First Of All, There Is Nothing Orderly About The Universe.Most Of It Is In Utter Chaos.Do You Know About The Winds In Planets In Our Solar System That Move At Thousands Of Miles Per Hour And Destroy Everything In Its Wake Hell Even On Earth There Are Earthquakes That Kill Hundreds Of Thousands Of People At Once..This Universe And Earth Looks More Like The Product Of Chaos Than Design..Will Write More Later.

Abso1uteZero:
I Kept An Open Mind So I Would Plead You To Do The Same..First Of All, There Is Nothing Orderly About The Universe.Most Of It Is In Utter Chaos.Do You Know About The Winds In Planets In Our Solar System That Move At Thousands Of Miles Per Hour And Destroy Everything In Its Wake Hell Even On Earth There Are Earthquakes That Kill Hundreds Of Thousands Of People At Once..This Universe And Earth Looks More Like The Product Of Chaos Than Design..Will Write More Later.

You are not in any predicament. You are an atheist.

I Know I Came Here Confused, I Am Not So Sure Now