This is BS to the 3rd power. I want to answer each of you statements, but I think this is the part that needs to be addressed.
1. "It's called 'faith' for a reason" indeed. When you present irrational ideas to rational people, you'd better have an escape route. 'Faith' is a cop-out.
2. "It's a belief in a code of ethics".....give me a break. Have you read the Bible? It promotes slavery, and murder. Are slavery and murder "ethical" in your book, because they sure as hell aren't in mine.
3. Doctrines of the Bible? See answer number two. You can cherry-pick the good all you want, but there is no denying that the Bible houses some truly revolting "teachings".
This is all just my opinion and I am definitely not looking for a fight....
I do believe Faith is a big part in answering these questions. I am not ashamed that I have faith in God, and my faith in God does not make me irrational. I don't know if that is what you are trying to say Gmroz.
And about the doctrine of the Bibles, you would really have to pick and choose or "cherry-pick" verses out of the Bible and take them out of context to say that the Bible promotes slavery and murder. In fact anyone who has read the Bible would know that the overwhelming message is one of hope, love, and mercy, both shown by God and that we should show to others.
How he phrases these questions is ridiculous. He says that Christians believe God is at work healing cancer, healing diseases, and reversing the effects of poison(which I understand is something that the body can naturally combat and the effects of poison often are similar to diseases)
So why doesnt God heal amputees? Well last I checked amputee wasn't a disease, so you can't heal it. Once you lose it, its gone. It is the same as asking why doesn't God raise people from the dead(and Im talking really dead). God wants us to have faith in Him, if he performed these type of miracles that are blatant, one wouldn't need faith to believe in God.
This brings about why does God require us to have faith in Him if he is such a perfect God? Well, God wants us to have free will (volition), and by slapping us over the head with evidence of Him, He would be taking away our free will since there would be no doubt that He exists,( we would have no choice to believe in Him and Love him) He came and died for our sins so that through Him we could be "near" Him in heaven without sin.
Now this brings about another question, If God is perfect then "Why did He allow Sin in the first place?" This can be answered by saying that God made the world perfect it was man's free will that created the sin. We chose to disobey God, bringing sin into this world.
Why does God allow people to starve to death? In all cases you will find people starving is caused by man?s doing, not God?s. It is not that God is forcing these people to starve and die because He is cruel, it is that man is not perfect and this is the result of that. God does not actively intervene often( if ever) in our life?s.
So why would it matter that they are African children dying of starvation? What is different about them dying and some baby born with AIDS or some guy randomly hit by a bus? What he is asking is Why does a good God allow bad things to happen to good people? Which is a fair question. One answer is ?None of us are ?good? people the way God views good(without sin), so none of us are entitled to only good things happening to us?, Also, even if we were good people, where does God promise that we will not go through hardships in this life? And finally, it is not that God cannot stop a guy from getting hit by a bus, or a child dying of starvation, It is not that He doesn?t love us because He lets it happen to us. If He stopped every bad thing that we caused as a result of our imperfection, we would be without freewill. He would never let us Sin, and thus removing us from our freewill.
Those Versus He cites are actually from the Pharisees (Teachers of the Old Testament) and not from God. And how these are explained to me is that they (Pharisees) actually built up a huge set of rules (especially regarding the Sabbath) around the actually Old Testament Law, so that no one would actually get close enough to breaking a real commandment from God. If anyone does their homework they will see that Jesus corrects the Pharisees over and over and over in the NEW TESTAMENT about how they have fallen away from God and that they were teaching their own set of rules as equal to God?s Laws.
We could go on all day about the ?nonsense? the Bible talks about regarding science, so I will just say that there are many Christians that have done a lot more research than I have regarding this subject and that I too have questions, but it is not that I shun these questions because it might uproot my faith, I actively try to learn more about how the world works. Because it says in the Bible that the world was covered with a flood and now we know that the whole earth couldn?t be covered naturally does not make me throw my whole faith away. Also, to try to completely explain something supernatural in natural terms is ?nonsense? and impossible.
Why didn?t Jesus? miracles not leave behind any evidence? UMMMM I really don?t know what He is asking even though we have multiple accounts from non Christian historians that Jesus did exist and that He had many followers, also we have accounts from the Bible.
Jesus never appear to me, again goes back to freewill (not a ?weird rationalization?)
Why would Jesus want you to eat his Body and Drink His Blood? I am not even going to acknowledge a question that is taken so out of context and Honestly if this is a serious question you have about your faith, then you haven?t even opened your Bible.
Christian get divorced has nothing to do with God. It has everything to do with our Christian culture, and our lack of values and OUR imperfect nature. We could go on all day about hypocritical Christians or behaviors that make them hypocrites, but it has nothing to do with whether God exists or His perfect nature.
So I believed I answered all of them. Only a couple are actually original questions, the others are just spin offs of the few basic ones. I never felt ashamed or uncomfortable thinking about any of these questions. I think the guy who made this is a pompous ass, not because he challenges my faith ( I don?t mind at all, it wouldn?t be MY faith if it wasn?t challenged) but the condescending attitude he has, and his voice annoys the hell out of me. I also find it novel that he associates prayer as being equal to commands. We pray to God and He doesn?t appear, so something must be wrong. As in we command God to appear, or people command God to help them and if they aren?t helped, something is wrong with God. I view prayer as communication with God, not only asking Him and thanking Him, but also just talking to Him and telling Him my thoughts and concerns and hopes.
So in conclusion, I know this is a long winded post, with many personal insights on my own life and beliefs, but I felt that if it helps a couple people then it is worth it. Also, there is no way to answer many of these questions in a one liner end all. Saying ?have faith? without any context really does come across as nonsense to those that do not have that faith you are talking about. And I would be more than happy to talk with any of you about any of these answers.
