The idea of faith is not based upon physical evidence but spiritual evidence. Faith is a relational word. For example, I trust my wife. It is the spirit side of my marriage that is best. Faith is not unproven acceptance of what someone said, but a confidence in another's character. I don't believe in Jesus because anyone told me to, but because He revealed His character to me and I trust Him. That is a spiritual revelation so you cannot relate to it and you have no knowledge of it. I have experienced it, but you can't. Don't try. I don't know what heaven looks like, but I know the character of Jesus and I believe He rose from the dead and ascended, based upon that revelation in my heart. Without having any spiritual way of relating to Jesus, I don't think you can, unless you just like the literature.
I have no idea. Christianity certainly doesn't preach that - in fact, it argues the opposite and says that life will often be difficult and/or suck on Earth if you follow it. But, in general, when you judge "God's actions" with regard to disease, natural disaster, etc, you're making that assumption when you say "why would God do that".
I find the "god works in mysterious ways" saying a common scapegoat to illogical inconsistencies within organized religion.
Of course - but you're starting from a framepoint of skepticism. But you're still making an assumption that people know God's goals. You're essentially creating a strawman and then criticizing religion for it.
I prefer to start at a frame point of skepticism as should everyone else. And no I assume that if someone believes in an organized religion someone believes in god and the stories that go along with that particular god. Whenever there are some inconsistencies within their stories their scapegoat is "God works in mysterious ways".
Out of curiousity, why should everyone else do this? You're the one that made it into an inconsistency though. The religion (at least in the case of Christianity) never makes the claim that God's goal is making your life on Earth better. So when you ask why he's not doing that with disease/natural disaster/etc, you're creating a strawman based on what you think Christianity is or should be saying. You've created your own version of the religion and then criticize it for being inconsistent.
Because skepticism can eventually lead to the truth. While blind faith allows one to believe they already know the answers.
I'm not the one saying that Christians make the claim that God's purpose is to make human life more pleasant on this Earth. My claim is that ANY contradiction is answered with "God works in mysterious ways".
Think about a constant presence that was in your life for a significant portion of your life...ie parents; after a while they arent there...but their msg still resonates...its not the same booming or thunderous msg, but you can still hear it even as clear as day, while things around you may be as still as a pin drop...
http://www.thethinkingatheist.com/page/bible-contradictions Go ahead and try to refute every single one of them.
So you Googled "Bible Contradictions" and didn't use the first search result because the first sentence of the page says: "Not everyone will agree that all of the listed "contradictions" are, in fact, contradictions." So you then you just went with the second search result. I don't know if that's what you did, but it's lol if it is.
You can LOL if you find the source inaccurate. Now tell me there are zero contradictions in the Bible.
and no I chose a random link because it is so damn easy to find them. Its more foolish to just blatantly say that there are zero within the Bible.
I'm not going to go down that road to nowhere with you. Yes there are contradictions in the Bible, IMO, mostly based off of the fact that it was written by different people with different POVs over different time periods. If you want to nitpick, you'd probably find 100s if not 1,000s. If that's a battle you want to fight, then more power to you. You said: And you were asked for examples of this. Because, we all know that that is not the context that the saying is normally used in. Contradiction that is.
I never said it was a a benevolent god. Also to your point about "God working in mysterious ways", a supreme being from a human standpoint will work in mysterious ways since such a being will be vastly beyond human understanding more than a single skin cell will be able to comprehend the whole of my body.
