Author Topic: Searching for GOD...  (Read 3871826 times)

Shaker

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Re: Searching for GOD...
« Reply #2825 on: August 05, 2015, 11:12:29 AM »
This idea that God wants us to follow him and so hides from us isn't just bizarre, it's unbiblical - what about the parable of the lost sheep? God should be searching for us. The closest analogy I can think of is dumping a child in the wilderness and then waiting for it to find its way back. Surely any loving parent tears the world apart in trying to find a lost child?

As for the contact lense thing - really? How small some people make their God out to be.
I've heard it said about finding a parking space in a busy car park, too.

Seriously.
Pain, or damage, don't end the world. Or despair, or fucking beatings. The world ends when you're dead. Until then, you got more punishment in store. Stand it like a man, and give some back. - Al Swearengen, Deadwood.

Nearly Sane

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Re: Searching for GOD...
« Reply #2826 on: August 05, 2015, 11:25:16 AM »
As you say in your sig line, Alan, The TRUTH will, indeed, set you free - free from delusion.

Unfortunately Susan, Alan's "truth" is itself a delusion.  :(

Is it? Prove it.

The usual cheap cop-out, which I would not normally use. But I am making an exception in this case.  :)

No, you prove it isn't!

You are the one making the positive claim - you have the burden of proof.

Rhiannon

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Re: Searching for GOD...
« Reply #2827 on: August 05, 2015, 11:42:54 AM »
This idea that God wants us to follow him and so hides from us isn't just bizarre, it's unbiblical - what about the parable of the lost sheep? God should be searching for us. The closest analogy I can think of is dumping a child in the wilderness and then waiting for it to find its way back. Surely any loving parent tears the world apart in trying to find a lost child?

As for the contact lense thing - really? How small some people make their God out to be.
I've heard it said about finding a parking space in a busy car park, too.

Seriously.

Me too. Very popular point of view actually, IME.

Maeght

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Re: Searching for GOD...
« Reply #2828 on: August 05, 2015, 11:45:14 AM »
Just as you will do the next time you post, if you bother to reply to this (which is exceedingly doubtful).

Well I must thank you for taking the trouble to give a very detailed account of the logic behind your views.  I can see where you are coming from, and sympathise with how things must seem from outside our faith.

As I see it, faith is an integral part of our existence.  If God wanted to make His presence obvious it could easily be done, but for whatever reason it will not happen yet.  I do not fully understand why, but it seems to be bound up in the way we use our gift of free will.  If God made Himself obvious, we would not have the opportunity to use our free will to take a step in faith.  He will not impose Himself on us - He wants us to choose to follow Him.  So I believe this is why any attempt to use methodology to prove answers to prayer is doomed to failure.

Saying that, I know from many personal experiences that good things will happen when I pray about them, which would not have happened if I did not pray.  I know there is no way I can convince you that this is not just confirmation bias, but is is my personal perception.  I once lost a hard contact lense on a grassy field, said a prayer, put my finger in the grass, and found the lens to be at the tip of my finger, then said a prayer of thanks.  I know you will write this off as mere coincidence, but it is just one of many which keep happening throughout my life.

Blimey, you go from a battle hundreds of years ago to finding a contact lens! You cannot say that finding your contact lens wouldn't have happened without you having prayed. Unlikely things happen all the time and if you are in the habit of praying in such circumstances then when you find the thing you are looking for then you are bound to think its to do with your prayer and remember that. How about an example which is clearly impossible for it to have happened without divine intervention and clear supporting evidence that it did happen?

Maeght

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Re: Searching for GOD...
« Reply #2829 on: August 05, 2015, 11:48:08 AM »
I always remember the story of the family picnicing near a storm drain. The child fell in, the father dived in  swam underwater for a considerable time and dragged the child out. He was taken to hospital and survived. The mother thanked God for saving her child and the father nodded in the background! If God can and does intervene in everyday lives why didn't he stop the child falling in in the first place, or scoop him up with an invisible hand and put him back on the dry land?

Alan Burns

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Re: Searching for GOD...
« Reply #2830 on: August 05, 2015, 12:01:30 PM »
I always remember the story of the family picnicing near a storm drain. The child fell in, the father dived in  swam underwater for a considerable time and dragged the child out. He was taken to hospital and survived. The mother thanked God for saving her child and the father nodded in the background! If God can and does intervene in everyday lives why didn't he stop the child falling in in the first place, or scoop him up with an invisible hand and put him back on the dry land?
We are God's hands on this earth
The truth will set you free  - John 8:32
Truth is not an abstraction, but a person - Edith Stein
Free will, though it makes evil possible, is also the only thing that makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having. - CS Lewis
Joy is the Gigantic Secret of Christians - GK Chesterton

Alan Burns

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Re: Searching for GOD...
« Reply #2831 on: August 05, 2015, 12:06:49 PM »

I know from many personal experiences that good things will happen when I pray about them, which would not have happened if I did not pray.

Alan, mate, you are an intelligent man, so I know you did not write that sentence with much thought behind it.

Read it again now, and tell me how you could possibly know what would happen or not happen if didn't pray about it.
I have to stand by what I said, Len.  I know from experience that the things I pray about always end up better than the things I choose not to pray about, or sometimes forget to pray about.  I know there is no way to prove this to an outsider, but I know from within when God answers prayers.
The truth will set you free  - John 8:32
Truth is not an abstraction, but a person - Edith Stein
Free will, though it makes evil possible, is also the only thing that makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having. - CS Lewis
Joy is the Gigantic Secret of Christians - GK Chesterton

floo

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Re: Searching for GOD...
« Reply #2832 on: August 05, 2015, 12:08:45 PM »
How will the god answers prayers mob explain this one?

When I was young I knew a lovely elderly lady who attended our Pentecostal church. She was a ''born again' Christian, but didn't go on about her faith in words, she let her good deeds do the talking, which was much to her credit. :) Anyway whether it was dementia, or some other mental illness I am unsure, but towards the end of her life she became convinced that the deity no longer loved her and she was going to hell. No amount of prayers etc would convince her otherwise, much to her poor husband's distress. :o As she was dying she still believed she was about to enter hell.

If the deity exists and could have put her mind at rest, why the hell didn't it? >:(

Rhiannon

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Re: Searching for GOD...
« Reply #2833 on: August 05, 2015, 12:10:39 PM »
I always remember the story of the family picnicing near a storm drain. The child fell in, the father dived in  swam underwater for a considerable time and dragged the child out. He was taken to hospital and survived. The mother thanked God for saving her child and the father nodded in the background! If God can and does intervene in everyday lives why didn't he stop the child falling in in the first place, or scoop him up with an invisible hand and put him back on the dry land?
We are God's hands on this earth

Including my daughter's best friend? He died from meningitis.

Including her classmate killed in a car accident? The car she was travelling in aquaplaned in heavy rain and hit a tree. She was on her way home from Brownies. The car was driven by her nineteen year old sister.

Rhiannon

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Re: Searching for GOD...
« Reply #2834 on: August 05, 2015, 12:13:58 PM »
How will the god answers prayers mob explain this one?

When I was young I knew a lovely elderly lady who attended our Pentecostal church. She was a ''born again' Christian, but didn't go on about her faith in words, she let her good deeds do the talking, which was much to her credit. :) Anyway whether it was dementia, or some other mental illness I am unsure, but towards the end of her life she became convinced that the deity no longer loved her and she was going to hell. No amount of prayers etc would convince her otherwise, much to her poor husband's distress. :o As she was dying she still believed she was about to enter hell.

If the deity exists and could have put her mind at rest, why the hell didn't it? >:(

I was once a member -briefly- of a website for Christian mothers. The website was run by a CofE vicar's wife and her old man popped by regularly with nuggets of wisdom. He told one grieving woman -her mum had died a week or so before - that her non-believing mother was damned.

If God answers prayers he'd have answered mine that some of his arsehole followers would shut the fuck up.

floo

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Re: Searching for GOD...
« Reply #2835 on: August 05, 2015, 12:23:20 PM »
I know this probably sounds b*tchy, but I almost wish those who have banged on about how wonderful the deity and Jesus are, and how much they are looking forward to spending all eternity in their company, had a second or two of revelation as they were dying. The revelation would be that this life is as good as it gets and no afterlife exists!

Would they feel cheated that they had spent their lives believing in a mere fantasy?

If I was a betting person, which I am not, I can guess the sort of response I am going to get to that comment! ;D

floo

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Re: Searching for GOD...
« Reply #2836 on: August 05, 2015, 12:24:58 PM »
How will the god answers prayers mob explain this one?

When I was young I knew a lovely elderly lady who attended our Pentecostal church. She was a ''born again' Christian, but didn't go on about her faith in words, she let her good deeds do the talking, which was much to her credit. :) Anyway whether it was dementia, or some other mental illness I am unsure, but towards the end of her life she became convinced that the deity no longer loved her and she was going to hell. No amount of prayers etc would convince her otherwise, much to her poor husband's distress. :o As she was dying she still believed she was about to enter hell.

If the deity exists and could have put her mind at rest, why the hell didn't it? >:(

I was once a member -briefly- of a website for Christian mothers. The website was run by a CofE vicar's wife and her old man popped by regularly with nuggets of wisdom. He told one grieving woman -her mum had died a week or so before - that her non-believing mother was damned.

If God answers prayers he'd have answered mine that some of his arsehole followers would shut the fuck up.

I would have liked to have hanged that evil turd by his dangly bits from his church steeple! >:(

Leonard James

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Re: Searching for GOD...
« Reply #2837 on: August 05, 2015, 12:37:16 PM »

I know from many personal experiences that good things will happen when I pray about them, which would not have happened if I did not pray.

Alan, mate, you are an intelligent man, so I know you did not write that sentence with much thought behind it.

Read it again now, and tell me how you could possibly know what would happen or not happen if didn't pray about it.
I have to stand by what I said, Len.  I know from experience that the things I pray about always end up better than the things I choose not to pray about, or sometimes forget to pray about.  I know there is no way to prove this to an outsider, but I know from within when God answers prayers.

OK, Alan, and I know from within that he doesn't. In fact I know that he isn't even there.  :)

Shaker

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Re: Searching for GOD...
« Reply #2838 on: August 05, 2015, 01:15:08 PM »
I always remember the story of the family picnicing near a storm drain. The child fell in, the father dived in  swam underwater for a considerable time and dragged the child out. He was taken to hospital and survived. The mother thanked God for saving her child and the father nodded in the background! If God can and does intervene in everyday lives why didn't he stop the child falling in in the first place, or scoop him up with an invisible hand and put him back on the dry land?
We are God's hands on this earth

Including my daughter's best friend? He died from meningitis.

Including her classmate killed in a car accident? The car she was travelling in aquaplaned in heavy rain and hit a tree. She was on her way home from Brownies. The car was driven by her nineteen year old sister.
One of my mates at school was a real sporty type - especially rugby. Real rugby type. Lived for it. Mystified me but there you go - different strokes and all that.

One evening as he was leaving the rugby club on his bike he was clipped - well, not so much clipped as smashed into by a car and turned into raspberry jam, essentially. He was seventeen.
Pain, or damage, don't end the world. Or despair, or fucking beatings. The world ends when you're dead. Until then, you got more punishment in store. Stand it like a man, and give some back. - Al Swearengen, Deadwood.

Leonard James

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Re: Searching for GOD...
« Reply #2839 on: August 05, 2015, 01:27:39 PM »
I always remember the story of the family picnicing near a storm drain. The child fell in, the father dived in  swam underwater for a considerable time and dragged the child out. He was taken to hospital and survived. The mother thanked God for saving her child and the father nodded in the background! If God can and does intervene in everyday lives why didn't he stop the child falling in in the first place, or scoop him up with an invisible hand and put him back on the dry land?
We are God's hands on this earth

Including my daughter's best friend? He died from meningitis.

Including her classmate killed in a car accident? The car she was travelling in aquaplaned in heavy rain and hit a tree. She was on her way home from Brownies. The car was driven by her nineteen year old sister.
One of my mates at school was a real sporty type - especially rugby. Real rugby type. Lived for it. Mystified me but there you go - different strokes and all that.

One evening as he was leaving the rugby club on his bike he was clipped - well, not so much clipped as smashed into by a car and turned into raspberry jam, essentially. He was seventeen.

Rhi and Shakes,

It's hopeless! No matter how heart-rending the occurrence, Alan is always going to find a get-out clause for his "God".

I'm afraid he is little more than a robot programmed by his beliefs.

Shaker

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Re: Searching for GOD...
« Reply #2840 on: August 05, 2015, 01:49:39 PM »
I was once a member -briefly- of a website for Christian mothers. The website was run by a CofE vicar's wife and her old man popped by regularly with nuggets of wisdom. He told one grieving woman -her mum had died a week or so before - that her non-believing mother was damned.

If God answers prayers he'd have answered mine that some of his arsehole followers would shut the fuck up.
The truly disturbing thing about this is that the man was being honest according to his worldview and belief system. Christianity does preach that non believers (in Christianity) will be damned because Jesus said that he was the (not a) way, the truth and the life and nobody gets to the Father except by him. It's in the book, laid out in black and white. Similarly, Islam says that there is no God but Allah and Mohammed is his prophet.

This is why monotheisms are the problem. They make exclusive, absolutist claims. When there's a belief in only the one god, pluralism goes out of the window. If there's only one god,  there's only one right way of believing and behaving; only one set of dos and don'ts. Anything else is error, basically, and must be stamped out. This is what leads, directly and ineluctably, to the foul and pernicious beliefs outlined above by that idiot, albeit a consistent idiot. Twat that he is, he was following his beliefs; the beliefs are at fault for turning otherwise ordinary folk into moral imbeciles such as this.
« Last Edit: August 05, 2015, 01:57:59 PM by Shaker »
Pain, or damage, don't end the world. Or despair, or fucking beatings. The world ends when you're dead. Until then, you got more punishment in store. Stand it like a man, and give some back. - Al Swearengen, Deadwood.

floo

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Re: Searching for GOD...
« Reply #2841 on: August 05, 2015, 01:49:56 PM »
I always remember the story of the family picnicing near a storm drain. The child fell in, the father dived in  swam underwater for a considerable time and dragged the child out. He was taken to hospital and survived. The mother thanked God for saving her child and the father nodded in the background! If God can and does intervene in everyday lives why didn't he stop the child falling in in the first place, or scoop him up with an invisible hand and put him back on the dry land?
We are God's hands on this earth

Including my daughter's best friend? He died from meningitis.

Including her classmate killed in a car accident? The car she was travelling in aquaplaned in heavy rain and hit a tree. She was on her way home from Brownies. The car was driven by her nineteen year old sister.
One of my mates at school was a real sporty type - especially rugby. Real rugby type. Lived for it. Mystified me but there you go - different strokes and all that.

One evening as he was leaving the rugby club on his bike he was clipped - well, not so much clipped as smashed into by a car and turned into raspberry jam, essentially. He was seventeen.

Rhi and Shakes,

It's hopeless! No matter how heart-rending the occurrence, Alan is always going to find a get-out clause for his "God".

I'm afraid he is little more than a robot programmed by his beliefs.

That would appear to be the case. One just has to press the button and get the programmed response!

BashfulAnthony

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Re: Searching for GOD...
« Reply #2842 on: August 05, 2015, 02:01:07 PM »
I always remember the story of the family picnicing near a storm drain. The child fell in, the father dived in  swam underwater for a considerable time and dragged the child out. He was taken to hospital and survived. The mother thanked God for saving her child and the father nodded in the background! If God can and does intervene in everyday lives why didn't he stop the child falling in in the first place, or scoop him up with an invisible hand and put him back on the dry land?
We are God's hands on this earth

Including my daughter's best friend? He died from meningitis.

Including her classmate killed in a car accident? The car she was travelling in aquaplaned in heavy rain and hit a tree. She was on her way home from Brownies. The car was driven by her nineteen year old sister.
One of my mates at school was a real sporty type - especially rugby. Real rugby type. Lived for it. Mystified me but there you go - different strokes and all that.

One evening as he was leaving the rugby club on his bike he was clipped - well, not so much clipped as smashed into by a car and turned into raspberry jam, essentially. He was seventeen.

Rhi and Shakes,

It's hopeless! No matter how heart-rending the occurrence, Alan is always going to find a get-out clause for his "God".

I'm afraid he is little more than a robot programmed by his beliefs.

That would appear to be the case. One just has to press the button and get the programmed response!

That comment from a stooge who simply rolls out the same templates day in and day out, imo.
BA.

Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life.

It is my commandment that you love one another."

Alan Burns

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Re: Searching for GOD...
« Reply #2843 on: August 05, 2015, 02:16:53 PM »
I know this probably sounds b*tchy, but I almost wish those who have banged on about how wonderful the deity and Jesus are, and how much they are looking forward to spending all eternity in their company, had a second or two of revelation as they were dying. The revelation would be that this life is as good as it gets and no afterlife exists!

Would they feel cheated that they had spent their lives believing in a mere fantasy?

If I was a betting person, which I am not, I can guess the sort of response I am going to get to that comment! ;D
I would of course be grateful for the wonderful life I have been given on this earth.  Anything extra will be a bonus.
The truth will set you free  - John 8:32
Truth is not an abstraction, but a person - Edith Stein
Free will, though it makes evil possible, is also the only thing that makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having. - CS Lewis
Joy is the Gigantic Secret of Christians - GK Chesterton

horsethorn

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Re: Searching for GOD...
« Reply #2844 on: August 05, 2015, 03:59:12 PM »
We've done the soul/consciousness thing to death on lots of threads - but you still haven't answered the point about whether you naccept that the example you gave demonstartes nothing about the actual existence of God.
Once we accept the reality of our soul, we have to accept that our soul did not originate from the material of this universe.  It came from God.

Except that it's perfectly possible to construct other hypotheses that are equally valid which don't include your god.

Still no differentiation for your religion, then, and less plausible than many others.

ht
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Maeght

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Re: Searching for GOD...
« Reply #2845 on: August 05, 2015, 04:12:52 PM »
I always remember the story of the family picnicing near a storm drain. The child fell in, the father dived in  swam underwater for a considerable time and dragged the child out. He was taken to hospital and survived. The mother thanked God for saving her child and the father nodded in the background! If God can and does intervene in everyday lives why didn't he stop the child falling in in the first place, or scoop him up with an invisible hand and put him back on the dry land?
We are God's hands on this earth

Nice phrase but not really very meaningful. Is the verse that TW quoted earlier on wrong then as it seems to tell a different story.

'And they swarmed up over the broad plain of the earth and encircled the fortress (camp) of God’s people (the saints) and the beloved city; but fire descended from heaven and consumed them.'

Alan Burns

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Re: Searching for GOD...
« Reply #2846 on: August 05, 2015, 04:38:15 PM »
I know this probably sounds b*tchy, but I almost wish those who have banged on about how wonderful the deity and Jesus are, and how much they are looking forward to spending all eternity in their company, had a second or two of revelation as they were dying. The revelation would be that this life is as good as it gets and no afterlife exists!

Would they feel cheated that they had spent their lives believing in a mere fantasy?

If I was a betting person, which I am not, I can guess the sort of response I am going to get to that comment! ;D

I would of course be grateful for the wonderful life I have been given on this earth.  Anything extra will be a bonus.

Given by whom?
Certainly not by the hostile nature of this universe.
The truth will set you free  - John 8:32
Truth is not an abstraction, but a person - Edith Stein
Free will, though it makes evil possible, is also the only thing that makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having. - CS Lewis
Joy is the Gigantic Secret of Christians - GK Chesterton

Shaker

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Re: Searching for GOD...
« Reply #2847 on: August 05, 2015, 05:39:04 PM »
What do you mean by hostile?
Well, apart from a gnat's pubes-thin skin of breathable atmosphere and tolerable temperatures, the vast majority of the universe is viciously, brutally lethal to our kind of life. Fred Hoyle once said that space isn't far away: if you could drive straight upwards you could hop in your car and at a steady 60mph be there in an hour or so. The only trouble is that you'd be dead within seconds. We - as in all life on earth, not just humans - dodge bullets every single day - that hour's car ride away there's not just the lack of air to breathe, there's the staggering cold, the lethal cosmic radiation, lumps of junk (man-made and natural) to dodge ... it goes on.

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Pain, or damage, don't end the world. Or despair, or fucking beatings. The world ends when you're dead. Until then, you got more punishment in store. Stand it like a man, and give some back. - Al Swearengen, Deadwood.

Alan Burns

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Re: Searching for GOD...
« Reply #2848 on: August 05, 2015, 05:41:57 PM »

What do you mean by hostile?
Unguided natural forces are demonstrably destructive
The truth will set you free  - John 8:32
Truth is not an abstraction, but a person - Edith Stein
Free will, though it makes evil possible, is also the only thing that makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having. - CS Lewis
Joy is the Gigantic Secret of Christians - GK Chesterton

Shaker

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Re: Searching for GOD...
« Reply #2849 on: August 05, 2015, 05:43:56 PM »

What do you mean by hostile?
Unguided natural forces are demonstrably destructive
No they're not Alan.
Pain, or damage, don't end the world. Or despair, or fucking beatings. The world ends when you're dead. Until then, you got more punishment in store. Stand it like a man, and give some back. - Al Swearengen, Deadwood.