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Alice,

I did NOT delete the thread, and I wish that I had copies of it, but I don't. There were many beautiful posts in that thread from sweet Christians trying to help you. Many of them obviously involved a lot of time and effort from people who love you and want to share the GOOD NEWS OF THE GOSPEL WITH YOU.

I'm praying that some folks have copies of their posts and can repost them here. I don't have copies of my own posts in that thread. I know that you probably don't like me very much, specificially because I enforced the forum rules on the theory of evolution. However, I still love you and want to share Jesus with you. I can start over with my posts attempting to do that if you wish.

There is LOVE in Jesus,
Tom

I am GENUINELY touched by the love and compassion that I've seen here.
Even though some people have been less than welcoming, in the main, the response to my posts and the dialogue I've had with many people has been very rewarding and engaging.

I'm still turning all this stuff around in my head, trying to find a way to put it all together that makes sense to me.

2nd Timothy, thank you SO much for your kindness and generosity of spirit. If there is a God, I'm sure that He would be proud of the way you give of yourself to others, and the manner in which you do it.

Love


Alice

I'm a little slow, I kept searching and couldn't find the thread, how in the world did it just disappear?
I know some will roll there eyes but I wonder, does the devil have computer knowledge?

musicllover

I am really trying to understand a defferent way to look at all of this but I am finding it very hard. I replied privately to some of Felix's comments but I didn't want to upset anyone here by posting my thoughts on the forum. I just can't seem to make it all add up.

I am really trying to understand a defferent way to look at all of this but I am finding it very hard. I replied privately to some of Felix's comments but I didn't want to upset anyone here by posting my thoughts on the forum. I just can't seem to make it all add up.

Alice, I think things will make more sense after you trust God. Faith is always the guiding factor, then the evidence really starts falling in place. You can't expect to make everything add up before you have faith, because there is a devil who wants to confuse you. He's trying to mess you up because you're interested. If you keep trying to figure it out yourself, you will only get more confused. Faith is the answer.

Let faith guide you, and keep seeking and knocking. You will find.

For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written,   "I will destroy the wisdom of the wise,
   and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart."

Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe. For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.

For consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God.

1 Corinthians 1:18-29

A contradiction is still a contradiction whether one thinks about it or not and that is what I'm struggling with.

Incidentally, it would seem to me that most Christian beliefs are based on having thought about concepts reasonably and come to conclusions.

Quote:
Allinall, since you readily believe in God and all that goes along with it then you would agree that he gave man the most powerful brain of any creature. The power to question, the power to reflect, the power to ponder, do you really believe he wants you to simply accept, with no thought what could possibly be merely the writings of other men in an age when the earth was still flat and the sun revolved around it?
 
 

There is a great difference neighbor, in questioning God, and understanding Him.  He has given us a powerful brain, not to question whether He is, but to see Him as He has clearly shown Himself to be.  I've said it before, and will say it again, one need only look at the stars to see that there is a God.  One need only to look in himself to know that there is a God.  Yet we question this?  Why?  

Because in all of our wisdom and knowledge, we've developed science.  We've accomplished sooooo much in that area that we've become proud and certain that our knowledge defies the existence of God.  Tell me neighbor, if I take my computer apart, learn the usage of each component, begin to understand how the necessary power factors in, gain insight as to the workings of the each peripheral to the betterment of the whole...will that enable me to code the necessary software to make the thing actually perform?  Will it make me as wise and knowledgable as the designer?  No.  My point not being that I'd never be able to gain such knowledge.  My point, rather, is that my limited knowledge of the greater whole doesn't make me the expert, master, or the greater mind.  That, in a sense, is all science does.  It moves into a previously designed universe, takes it apart, learns how it works, sees the workings of each part in relation to the others...and learns that science has barely scratched the surface.  Then, has the audacity to claim that it knows enough to know that the Designer, not only is wrong, but never existed to begin with.  And the scientist is not a proud individual worshipping himself rather than God?

Quote:
For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened.  Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles.

Romans 1:21-23
 
 

Boy!  Those foolish early men!  How could the Egyptians ever have come up with bird, jackal, and dog gods?  How could they believe and worship animals, or kings?  How foolish.  And we have come so far.  Why, we've determined that, through science, there is no God.  We've determined that, through philosophy, religion is a crutch to the weak.  We've determined that, through our own vain and deceitful hearts, we are all we need in life...

Quote:
What has been is what will be,
  and what has been done is what will be done,
  and there is nothing new under the sun.
Is there a thing of which it is said,
  "See, this is new"?
It has been already
  in the ages before us.
There is no remembrance of former things,
  nor will there be any remembrance
of later things yet to be
  among those who come after.

Ecclesiastes 1:9-11
 
 

I don't mean this to sound harsh as it may my friend.  I mean it to sound as absurd as we make it to be.  Science takes faith.  We know more than we knew, but not enough to claim the whole.  We change previous thoughts when we learn something new.  Dude!  If I had a nickel for everytime I've learned that medical science has just learned that what I'm eating is going to kill me one year, and two years down the line figure out that not eating enough of it is going to kill me...I'd die a very sad, but nonetheless filthy rich man!  

Science is great.  But it is not the absolute.  Man knows this, so what does he do?  He removes the absolute.  We live in a society of men who believe truth to be relative.  Tell that to a man living a hundred years ago and he'd have thought you were nuts.  Tell a man today what I've just said and he'd claim the man prior to be ignorant.  Because we have "...come so far."  

It comes down to faith neighbor.  Who, and what are you going to believe?  Science, which has barely scratched the surface of what's out there...or the One Who put it out there?  

So I guess that what I'm saying is that I really wish that someone could show me how to reconcille the Bible with what we really SEE around us. For example, we know for a FACT that many stars are billions of light years away from us. This is a measured fact NOT a theory. Therefore the fact that the light has managed to reach us after a journey of billions of years means that the universe must be at least that old, but the Bible suggests a much younger universe than that. There is a contradiction then between what we actually SEE around us and what the Bible says and it is issues such as this that stop me from being able to just believe.

The heavens declare the glory of God,
   and the sky above proclaims his handiwork.

Psalm 19:1

God said..."And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, "You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die."

Genesis 2:16-17

Satan said..."But the serpent said to the woman, "You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil."

Genesis 3:4-5

I agree that it is an error to mistake this for absolute truth.

But if a scientist measures the temperature of a liquid for example and finds it to be 83.086 degrees C, then that is a statement of FACT. It is not just a scientific theory that light travels as 186,000 Miles per second.

The Paradox of Nothing
« on: June 18, 2004, 12:44:59 AM »    

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

CONQUEST OF LO DEBAR
(The paradox of nothing)


In Hebrew the name Lo Debar means nothing.  It is a place name whose image conjures up a desolate condition enveloped in a sense of hopelessness and its conquest is a meaningless pursuit.  What we are going to examine is the paradox of those who mistakenly pursue the belief in nothing.  While thinking they are truly wise, they are, on the other hand, grasping at less than a void, naively attributing to “nothing” the very virtues of God. For if nothing is God then God is nothing.

Perhaps the most enigmatic belief in this world is that of pure atheism.  In its most fundamental capacity it is the belief that God does not exists and nothing or no one, certainly not God, is credited with creating all things.  Requisite to that premise is the conviction that everything that does exist is simply the byproduct of random chance, somehow evolving over eons of time from nothing.  For this, atheists hold the distinction of being the most ardent defenders and many even worshippers of probably the most faith-based religion the world ever imagined.  Evolution!  

To the atheists God is just perhaps the figment of our imagination and he is no more than the result of and even bygone remnant of the evolution of our intellect.  But atheistic faith must go much farther than worshipping at the shrine of evolution and human achievement.  Evolution, even if it were possible to accept as the means by which the universe is ordered, fails miserably to offer an explanation for the existence of the universe itself.  The progression of matter and energy from one form to another is insufficient to explain how it all came to be in the first place, even if the universe was once or at numerous times collapsed to a point as small as what the “big bang” theory postulates.  Atheists, even those who do not profess to believe in evolution, are simply without options to describe how the ordering principles of life began.  Even so, without God, they have little choice except to believe that the universe and all it contains was created by and from “nothing”.  “Nothing” it seems plays the prominent role in atheism, for it must be either creator or dreamer.  For them “nothing” is maker of law, ruler of worlds and unknowable god of the entire universe.  Yet, self-defined as logical pragmatists, atheists are faced with a long list of impossible paradoxes.  While the existence of God is no easy concept, at the very least, He can be logically demonstrated to be the uncaused first cause for everything, and beyond that there is only faith that He is who He says He is.  Atheism on the other hand must desperately grasp with all of its intellect and logic to the belief that “nothing” is as great or greater than God in its creative capacity to order worlds seemingly without end into being.  To the atheist, the child of nothingness, random chance, is the singer of songs and the director of music orchestrating the beautiful tapestry of life ever progressing in synergistic fashion.  It is the blind impartial organizer and architect for the countless particles of nature, each progressing in harmony to build ever more intricate systems of life, acting both at the same time in defiance of and in accordance with the profoundly faultless laws of nature, which “nothing” created. This in and of itself is a paradox of overwhelming contradictions that proves intelligent design requires an intelligent designer.  Yet chance never created anything and chance cannot even spell "The Theory of Evolution" if given a chance to draw random letters every second for all the time that ever was and ever will be.

From the vantage point of those who believe in God it is that we see an inexplicable blindness to the truth of God’s existence.  Notwithstanding this, those who are blind to this truth are often heralded by the world as the most intelligent and logical.  Those who hold to a belief in God are frequently ridiculed as the most simple-minded and foolish.  But it can be proven beyond a reasonable doubt that there is a God and creator of it all.  The only alternative, even if you accept nothing beyond aliens bringing us here or that the world rest on the back of a giant turtle, is to believe in something that is paradoxically impossible.  Therefore, it is not those who believe in God who rely on faith the most, but it is those who do not believe in God that must have a greater faith in the magical power and mystical properties of Lo Debar.  Nothing!

Something cannot come from nothing, but what an Atheist is forced to believe is that something can come from nothing and indeed nothing by conquest of nothing created everything.  That takes more faith than anything.  That, my friend, is the great paradox of nothing.  

If God can thus be logically proven to be, then would it not be wise but to try and find out more about him and who he is?  For in the end there will be no excuse for anyone, because we are all witnesses to God’s eternal power and his invisible qualities as evidenced by creation.  

Psalms 14:1-3, “The fool says in his heart, "There is no God."

I'm a little slow, I kept searching and couldn't find the thread, how in the world did it just diappear?
I know some will roll there eyes but I wonder, does the devil have computer knowledge?

musicllover

I certainly don't think that science has (or ever could) disproved God. Anyone who thinks that is a little ignorant I think.

But I can't seem to get away from the fact that things we know for sure about the universe are not always in agreement with what the Bible says.

Why did God create the world? God created the world as an act of pure altruism, in order to do good. He created a world, and placed man upon it, in order that man be the recipient of this good.

What is this good that God desired to give man? God's intention would not be satisfied with giving anything less than the ultimate good.

But what is the greatest possible good God can give to man? The answer is that the greatest possible good is God Himself. Therefore, the good that God destined for man was the ability to resemble Him and draw close to Him.

For example, we know for a FACT that many stars are billions of light years away from us. This is a measured fact NOT a theory. Therefore the fact that the light has managed to reach us after a journey of billions of years means that the universe must be at least that old, but the Bible suggests a much younger universe than that.

1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. 2 The earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters.

3 Then God said, "(Let there) Be light"; and there was light. 4 God saw that the light was good;  and God separated the light from the darkness. 5 God called the light day, and the darkness He called night. And there was evening and there was morning, one day.